Hellion  and  the 
tflodernJflind  <s> 

o  o  o 

/rank  Carleton  Uoan 


GIFT   OF 


-^JLJ^->*      * 


RELIGION  AND  THE 
MODERN  MIND 


AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 
IN  MODERNISM 

BY 
FRANK  CARLETON  DOAN 


BOSTON 

SHERMAN,  FRENCH  &  COMPANY 
1909 


Copyright  1909 
SHERMAN,  FRENCH  &*  COMPANY 


;|v  .vi^u 


TO 

MY  FATHER 

fflCKSITE  QUAKER 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PREFACE iii 

I.     RELIGION   AND   THE    MODERN 

MIND 1 

II.     GOD  AND  THE  WORLD-HOME     .     53 

III.  LIFE    EVERLASTING:   ITS    CON- 

DITION     83 

IV.  PRAYER     AND     THE     MODERN 

MIND 117 

V.     THE  UNKNOWN  GOD    ....    143 

VI.     THE  INVISIBLE  HUMANITY  OF 

GOD 153 

VII.     THE  PRESENT  GOD      ....   162 

APPENDIX  A 173 

APPENDIX  B  .  ,187 


PREFACE 

i 

My  good  cousin  asked  me  the  other  day: 
"  For  whom  is  your  forthcoming  book  being 
written  ? "  I  was  obliged  to  make  answer : 
"  That  must  remain  to  be  seen.  We'll  have  to 
wait  until  the  book  has  come  forth  in  fact." 
Still,  as  it  is  being  thrown  upon  the  public  there 
is  no  harm  in  my  declaring  by  way  of  preface 
the  good  intention  of  the  book.  What  I  intend 
is  to  influence  you  who  read  me  understandingly 
to  clearer  and  sincerer  thinking  upon  matters 
which  do  vastly  concern  every  sober  man  —  mat- 
ters of  free  religion  and  a  modern  spirit.  As  I 
have  laboriously  read  the  proof-sheets  of  this,  my 
first-born  book,  I  have  remarked  many  an  imper- 
fection which,  alas,  it  was  all  too  late  to  correct. 
I  do  not  ask  the  critical  reader  to  condone  these: 
they  are,  I  know,  inexcusable  by  any  test  you 
may  apply.  What  I  do  ask  is  that  you  along 
with  me  should  sincerely  experiment  with  the  ex- 
perience of  God  herein  recorded.  For,  let  me 
assure  you,  it  is  an  experience.  If  at  any  point 
I  have  seemed  to  write  for  the  mere  pleasure  of 
the  thing,  or  if  for  the  moment  I  have  seemed 
to  expend  my  energies  in  worming  out  of  my 
inner  consciousness  a  Weltanschauung  amazing  to 
the  reason  merely  and  not  tolerable  in  terms  of 
life;  then  and  there  I  beg  you  to  read  lightly, 
iii 


iv  PREFACE 

But  if  in  places  you  find  me  writing  unaffectedly 
and  sincerely  of  matters  that  do  concern  me,  and 
may  you,  most  deeply,  then  I  conjure  you  to  read 
profoundly  there;  to  experiment  largely  in  the 
Life  you  glimpse  there. 

The  essays  sewed  together  in  this  little  volume 
were  delivered  on  very  various  occasions.  One  of 
them  was  occasioned  by  a  visitation  of  certain 
colleges  and  universities  I  was  authorized  to  make 
as  Billings  Lecturer  for  the  American  Unitarian 
Association.  One  or  two  others  were  used  in  the 
first  instance  as  chapel  talks  before  our  students 
in  the  theological  school,  and  afterwards  printed 
here  and  there.  The  essay  on  prayer  was  given 
in  substance  as  a  vesper  address  before  two  or 
three  colleges  and  universities  here  in  the  West. 
The  gist  of  another  was  used  in  such  places  as 
the  University  of  Wisconsin  and  Ohio  State  Uni- 
verity,  where  I  have  had  occasional  engagements. 
The  essay  on  Life  Everlasting  was  originally  de- 
livered as  the  Channing  Hall  address  in  Boston. 
And  so  on.  It  doesn't  matter  much  what  the 
precise  history  of  these  following  papers  has 
been.  As  they  now  stand  they  are  much  revised ; 
and,  I  dare  say,  anyway,  they  have  been  mostly 
forgotten  by  those  who  may  have  heard  or  read 
them  in  their  original  form. 

Mostly,  but  not  wholly,  I  may  be  permitted 
to  say.  For  I  have  in  my  letter-file  a  collection 
of  notes  from  friends,  some  known  and  others 
unknown,  who  tell  me  that  these  thoughts  con- 


PREFACE  v 

cerning  the  larger  Freedom  and  the  larger  Life 
have  in  marked  measure  brought  them  freedom 
and  life.  The  letters  are  mostly  from  men, — 
indeed  with  two  exceptions,  come  in  all  cases 
from  men.  I  confess  I  find  this  in  itself  an  en- 
couragement to  try  my  hand  at  addressing  a 
larger  circle  of  these  men  by  printing  a  book. 
Women  have  their  religion  as  a  matter  of  course : 
very  tender,  sensitive,  unspeakable  withal,  but  of 
course.  I  have  in  all  my  life  encountered  only 
one  woman-atheist; — or  is  it  as  many  as  two? 
God,  it  would  seem,  is  congenital  with  his  femi- 
nine offspring;  I  cannot  hope  that  my  essays  will 
do  more  than  perhaps  deepen  and  intensify  a 
humanism  in  religion  which  is  already  theirs  by 
a  sort  of  divine  right. 

But  perhaps  the  experience  of  God-Man  —  if 
the  name  sounds  awkward  in  your  ears  then 
choose  some  other;  for  the  name  doesn't  in  the 
least  matter  the  experience  I  am  seeking  to  set 
forth  —  the  experience  of  Man-God  I  aim  to  ex- 
press here  may  astonish  some  men  into  trying 
the  same  experiment  in  divinity.  The  point  is, 
to  strip  your  manhood  most  scrupulously,  most 
painfully  bare  of  all  its  filthy  parts,  to  lay  aside 
your  bestialities  and  liberate  your  manhoods,  to 
expose  the  naked,  cold-as-steel  soul  of  you  to  the 
eternal  tempering  energy  of  the  world's  fire-dust ; 
then  by  reacting  to  transpierce  the  universe's  self 
with  this  pure  and  strong  manhood  you  bear,  and 
call  the  resulting  experience  God,  God-Man, 


vi  PREFACE 

Man-God,  or  by  what  name  soever  God  may  will. 
That  experience  is  your  religion's  sole  deep  con- 
cern. That  experience  is  you ;  it  is  God. 

Perhaps  this  will  appeal,  I  say,  to  men  of  iron 
constitution.  God  grant  this. 

n 

How  often  does  one  encounter  in  the  history 
of  the  human  spirit  the  contemptible  argument 
against  this  or  that  vision  of  the  world  and  God: 
it  is  the  .vision  of  youth.  There  are  those,  doubt 
it  not,  my  younger  brethren!  who  will  condemn 
your  humanist  experience  of  God  on  precisely 
such  ground:  it  is  the  philosophy  of  youth,  en- 
thusiastic, breathless,  whimsical,  shallow.  But, 
mind  you,  a  man's  God,  whether  he  be  a  young 
enthusiast  or  an  old  partisan  of  his  God,  does 
most  tantalizingly  equal  his  age,  does  most  pre- 
cisely and  scrupulously  fit  his  own  annual  nature. 
If  then  the  God  of  younger  men  generally  is 
youthful,  buoyant,  adolescent;  then  by  the  same 
token  your  God,  my  very  dear  old  friends,  is  pro- 
portionally aged,  level-headed,  palsied,  senile.  It 
is  just  a  matter  of  temperament,  or  of  age,  so  far 
as  I  can  see.  Certainly  there  is  no  point  in 
arguing  the  case. 

Now,  it  seems  to  me,  jesting  and  back-biting 
aside,  that  we  may  as  well  face  a  vital  dilemma, — 
a  vital,  inner  disparity  of  human  temperaments 
which  must  be  felt,  I'm  sure,  by  every  man  who 
moves  with  any  sort  of  conscious  and  serious  pur- 


PREFACE  vii 

pose  among  his  fellows.  I  mean  that  immemorial 
and  ineradicable  conflict  between  men  who  are 
radically  enthusiastic  or  conservatively  partisan 
in  all  the  deep  concerns  of  this  life.  This  aliena- 
tion of  men  of  the  one  temperament  from  men  of 
the  other  is  after  all  not  much  a  matter  of  years, 
I  think.  There  is  no  measuring  of  youthfulness 
or  agedness  in  such  terms.  It  is  rather  a  matter 
of  temperament,  of  the  degree  of  freshness  in  a 
man's  soul  of  whatever  age.  On  the  one  hand 
you  may  find  frank,  fresh  spontaneity,  openness 
to  conviction,  an  insatiable  and  voracious  appe- 
tite for  living  being  kept  up  at  any  cost  through 
all  a  man's  no  matter  how  many  years  of  life. 
This  freshness,  as  I  have  remarked  again  and 
again  in  moving  among  men,  is  dead  against,  or 
rather  most  livelily  against,  that  sober,  balanced, 
withered  steadiness  observable  on  the  other  hand  in 
most  successful  business  men  and  in  all  religious 
bigots.  Perpetual  youth  against  congenital  aged- 
ness  —  there's  where  the  conflict  of  man  with  man 
is  severest  and  most  irrepressible.  It  is  in  a 
very  deep  sense  a  conflict  of  god  with  god !  For 
your  God,  as  I  have  said,  accords  with  and  fights 
on  the  side  of  your  temperamental  age. 

Not  that  one  of  the  perpetually  youthful  tem- 
per would  fail  to  profit  by  the  passing  years. 
For  one  I  hope  to  change  notably  in  the  quarter 
century  ahead  of  me,  the  period  of  service  vouch- 
safed me  before  I  attain  that  venerable,  scholas- 
tic majority  when  philosophy  teachers  are  apt  to 


viii  PREFACE 

be  "  retired  " —  as  the  delightfully  frank  phrase 
has  it.  As  Stevenson  says  somewhere :  "  To 
hold  the  same  views  at  forty  as  we  held  at  twenty 
is  to  have  been  stupefied  for  a  score  of  years."  I 
hope,  God  furthering  me !  to  view  with  profound 
dissatisfaction  this  first-born  book  of  my  soul  ere 
I  begin  to  attain  my  "  majority,"  my  age  of 
retirement.  Indeed,  I  even  now,  before  ever  the 
page-proofs  have  reached  the  bindery,  remark  a 
plenty  of  blemishes  I  would  gladly  remove  from 
my  book's  more  uncomely  parts.  But  to  make 
such  changes  in  the  interest  of  a  clearer  and  per- 
haps solemner  expression  of  the  deep  thing  you 
seek  to  communicate,  to  deepen  one's  life  and 
broaden  one's  views  of  it  all,  to  venture  beyond 
the  shallows  of  youth  into  the  deeps  of  a  larger, 
fuller  Life,  ever  to  enlarge  one's  craft  is  one 
thing;  to  change  one's  course  altogether  is  quite 
another.  As  to  altering  my  present  straight 
course  and  careening  quite  elsewhere  on  life's 
way;  as  to  believing  at,  say,  sixty  or  so,  what  is 
now  to  my  mind  only  so  much  stuff  and  nonsense, 
so  much  monstrous  blasphemy  of  him  I  here  call 
God  —  I  could  not  endure  that  without  losing 
my  humanity,  without  breaking  my  heart,  with- 
out debasing  and  destroying  the  very  soul  of  me. 
As  for  me  then,  being  as  I  am,  I  must  follow 
my  own  course.  In  youth  or  old  age,  in  life  or 
in  death,  in  body  or  in  spirit,  I  give  and  dedicate 
my  true  self,  in  all  sincerity  and  simplicity,  to 
him  I  call  God-Man  —  a  very  God  of  everlast- 


PREFACE  ix 

ing  youth  and  perpetually  buoyant  Life.  Being 
so,  you  see  that  if  I  ever  do  outgrow  the  experi- 
ence of  God  herein  made  public  I  am  indeed  a  lost 
soul;  all  the  sweet  juices  of  my  human  being  will 
have  been  bruised  out  of  me  upon  the  altar  stone 
of  the  world's  crushing  Reality.  In  such  a  state 
of  flat  and  withered  deadness  of  soul  I  think  I 
can  see  the  somnolent,  conservative,  aged  world- 
ground  yawning  to  receive  my  defeated  and 
juiceless  spirit.  God  forbid  that! 

"  Sunnyside,"  Meadville,  Pennsylvania. 
September,  1909. 


I 

RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 


What  is  the  place  of  religion  in  modern  life? 
Within  the  last  quarter  century  this  problem  has 
been  raised  so  frequently  and  from  such  trifling 
points  of  view  that  its  familiarity,  I  fear,  has 
bred  a  certain  contempt  in  the  mind  of  the  thor- 
oughly modern  man.  In  his  way  of  thinking 
these  various  attempts  to  establish  once  more  a 
vital  connection  between  the  church  anpl  human 
life  are  all,  each  in  its  own  way,  beside  the  point. 
They  are  too  secular;  or  too  apologetic;  or  too 
defensive;  or,  if  you  please,  too  practical.  The 
thing  needed  is  a  revival  of  those  eternal  verities 
in  which  all  men  of  whatever  culture  have  always 
instinctively  believed.  What  men  want  is  the  re- 
establishment  of  the  church  as  a  distributer  of  the 
bread  of  life,  of  the  pulpit  as  a  place  of  moral 
and  prophetic  vision.  Of  course  the  practical 
man  doesn't  put  his  case  just  this  way.  But  put 
it  for  him  frankly,  unaffectedly,  above  all  undog- 
matically,  and  he  will  bow  his  assent. 

Some  months  ago  certain  telling  editorials  ap- 
peared in  the  Wall  Street  Journal,  a  periodical 
hardly  to  be  accused  of  sentimentality  in  its  inner 
springs.  These  editorials  called  for  a  reviving  of 
the  impulses  of  religion  in  our  own  modern  life. 
1 


a      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

I  was  struck  by  the  absence  of  cant,  the  positive 
ring  of  sincerity  in  the  tone  of  these  editorial  ap- 
peals. I  was  myself  about  to  go  on  a  pilgrimage 
to  several  of  the  colleges  and  universities  of  the 
great  Northwest.  As  official  lecturer  for  one  of 
the  great  religious  denominations  of  the  country 
my  object  was  to  commend  the  ministry  to  these 
young  men  as  a  manly  and  commanding  pro- 
fession. I  asked  Mr.  Pratt  what  I  should  say  to 
these  college  and  university  men.  He  replied  that 
since  religion  is  the  prof oundest  instinct,  the  deep- 
est concern  of  human  being,  to  be  its  sponser  be- 
fore men  is  indisputably  a  man's  most  sacred 
calling.  But  the  trouble,  he  said,  with  the  mod- 
ern minister  is  that  "  he  preaches  the  truth  as  if 
it  were  fiction !  " 

Now  instead  of  a  simple  and  passionate  em- 
phasis of  eternal  truth  the  modern  minister  is 
urged  by  religion's  ill-advised  promoters  to  adopt 
all  sorts  of  practical,  not  to  say  sensational  de- 
vices for  reclaiming  the  modern  man.  Not  long 
ago  several  of  our  leading  magazines  opened  their 
columns  to  suggestions  of  ways  whereby  the 
church  might  be  made  once  more  a  vital  power  in 
the  lives  of  men.  The  prescriptions  were  many 
and  radical.  The  church,  for  one  thing,  should 
abandon  mediaeval  cathedral  architecture  and 
should  rather  imitate  the  style  of  the  great,  down- 
town business  blocks:  men  would  feel  more  at 
home  in  such  surroundings,  we  were  told.  The 
church,  for  another  thing,  should  become  "  in- 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      3 

stitutional,"  aiming  to  serve  the  whole  man  from 
his  head  to  his  feet :  "  You  can't  convert  a  man 
on  an  empty  stomach,"  they  said ;  "  nor  can  you 
compete  with  the  theaters  and  such  places  unless 
in  your  church  you  duplicate  in  some  fashion  their 
more  popular  attractions."  As  another  measure 
of  self-preservation  the  church  was  urged  to  elab- 
orate some  scheme  of  Christian  Socialism  where- 
with to  compromise  on  the  one  hand  the  Chris- 
tian with  the  socialist  and  on  the  other  hand  the 
socialist  with  the  Christian. 

It  was  about  this  time  that  one  of  our  fore- 
most American  psychologists  of  religion  was 
heard  to  say  in  private  that,  if  the  church  would 
keep  within  its  portals  the  independent,  thinking 
men  of  to-day,  the  preacher  must  allow  these  men 
to  "  talk  back."  The  day  of  priestly  hocus- 
pocus,  when  the  church  might  exercise  an  exter- 
nal authority  over  the  lives  of  men,  has  of  course 
gone  by.  On  that  we  are  agreed.  My  friend, 
the  psychologist,  swaying  to  an  opposite  extreme, 
holds  that  the  prophetic  and  apostolic  office  of 
the  preacher  is  itself  lost  forever!  It  only  re- 
mains for  the  church  to  become  a  sort  of  club- 
house, a  conference  hall;  the  minister  unfrocked, 
his  exalted  function  lowered,  would,  I  suppose, 
serve  as  a  sort  of  honorary  president  of  this  pres- 
ent century  club  organized  for  the  exchange  of 
opinion  upon  the  deep  and  eternal  concerns  of 
life! 

The  gist  of  all  these  inexpert  opinions  as  to 


4      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

the  tonic  best  suited  to  revive  moribund  churches 
is  after  all  contained  in  the  recommendation,  so 
often  repeated  in  these  days,  that  the  preacher 
should  give  his  people  "  practical  "  sermons.  It 
doesn't  much  matter,  he  is  told  by  his  worldly 
counselors,  what  the  theological  creed  of  his  church 
may  be :  men  won't  understand  that  very  well  any- 
way. It  were  better  to  dispose  of  it  quietly  at 
some  point  early  in  the  service,  then  proceed  — 
to  preach  truth  as  if  it  were  fiction ! 

These  remedies,  I  say,  are  too  external  and 
fumbling;  in  a  word,  too  practical.  They  are 
not  heroic  and  tonic  enough.  They  do  not  feed 
men's  spirit  with  the  sincere  milk  of  truth. 

One  is  bound  to  acknowledge  in  passing  that 
the  "  religious  "  papers  have  had  little  to  do  with 
these  more  external  specifics  for  the  restoration 
of  religion  to  a  place  of  influence  in  modern  life. 
On  the  whole  they  have  endeavored  to  rehabilitate 
the  church  in  more  vital  directions.  But,  here 
again,  there  is  palliation  and  want  of  clearness 
and  heroism  in  the  view  taken  of  the  church's 
relation  to  modern  life.  Too  much  of  the  nervous 
discussion  which  in  recent  years  has  filled  the 
columns  of  the  religious  weeklies  has  been  merely 
apologetic,  guarded  and  abjectly  defensive. 
Earnest  appeals  are  incessantly  made  to  the  su- 
preme and  indisputable  place  of  religion  in  the 
civilization  of  the  past.  "  Surely,"  we  are  told, 
"  men  cannot  yet  afford  to  dispense  with  the  great 
instruments  of  fear  and  faith  by  which  religion 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      5 

through  the  ages  has  controlled  and  developed 
human  civilization !  "  But  why  will  these  zealous 
defenders  of  the  faith  persist  in  confusing  re- 
ligion with  an  institution  called  the  "  Church," 
or  for  that  matter,  religion  with  that  particular 
denominational  theory  which  they  happen  to  pro- 
fess ?  To  confuse  the  eternal  impulses  of  religion 
—  fear,  faith,  love  and  the  like  —  with  an  institu- 
tion of  whatever  sort  or  age  is  in  itself  narrow- 
ing, misleading  and  mischievous. 

And  then  the  church  as  an  institution  has  not 
been  an  invariable  instrument  of  civilization,  as 
every  historian  well  knows.  In  some  instances  it 
has  dammed  the  springs  of  human  life  to  the 
point  of  inundation :  its  institutional  interests  have 
clogged  and  obstructed  those  very  impulses  of 
fear  and  faith  and  love  upon  whose  spontaneous 
and  free  action  the  religious  life  itself  depends. 

Least  of  all  can  it  be  claimed  that  the  church 
by  conserving  religious  dogmas  —  and  this  sounds 
curiously  like  the  claim  often  made  these  days  in 
defense  of  the  "  faith  of  the  fathers  " —  has  been 
the  faithful  promoter  of  human  rights  and  pro- 
gress. In  this  matter  of  dogma  it  has  been  in- 
variably her  arch-enemies,  science  and  philos- 
ophy, who  have  usurped  the  church's  instru- 
mentalities of  civilization  and  enlightenment.  No 
doubt  the  church  has  always  been  the  great  con- 
server;  but  so  often,  alas,  it  has  conserved  the 
wrong  thing!  —  the  shell  instead  of  the  kernel, 
the  dogma  instead  of  the  living  impulse  of  which 


6      KELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

the  dogma  is  but  the  ill-fitting  investment.  In 
all  this  I  would  be  understood :  these  defenders  of 
the  church  intend  sincerely  enough  to  revive  and 
reestablish  the  eternal  things  for  which  as  an  in- 
stitution the  church  ideally  stands.  But  always 
their  argument  is  overshadowed  by  the  spectre 
of  the  church  as  an  institution  of  dogmas  long 
since  cast  out  by  men  of  the  modern  mind.  At- 
tempts to  revive  the  church  in  this  or  that  historic 
form  of  doctrine  are  too  plainly  confuted  by  the 
solemn  fact  that,  as  an  institution  of  dogma, — 
and  that  is  what  the  Christian  Church,  as  historic, 
is, —  the  church  is  dead. 

n 

It  is  a  mistake  in  any  case  to  lump  all  modern 
men  and  then  attempt  to  establish  some  single 
relation  between  them  and  the  religious  life.  In 
the  following  pages  the  discussion  aims  not  at 
men  in  general,  but  rather  at  a  certain  type  of 
man,  the  man  with  what  I  have  presumed  to  call 
the  "  modern  mind." 

For  in  my  intercourse  with  men  I  seem  to  re- 
mark among  them  several  types  of  mind.  These 
temperaments  of  course  intercross  constantly:  no 
man  stands  in  any  perfectly  single  relation  to 
the  church.  But  on  the  whole  his  attitude  may 
be  marked  as  facing  predominantly  one  way  or 
another  in  religious  matters.  Among  these  sev- 
eral temperaments  I  have  been  especially  im- 
pressed with  three  types  of  mind.  Let  me  mark 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      7 

these  as  "  indifferent,"  "  confused  "  and  "  mod- 
ern." 

As  "  indifferent "  I  describe  the  man  who  has 
simply  dropped  the  services  of  religion  out  of 
his  life.  He  is  commonly  regarded  as  the  lead- 
ing type  of  mind  in  the  modern  world  of  affairs. 
All  his  energies  seem  to  have  become  commer- 
cialized. He  is  a  practical  and,  worst  of  all,  an 
unconscious  materialist.  His  materialism,  unlike 
that  of  a  former  period  of  human  history,  has 
no  conscious  principle  in  it.  It  isn't  as  if  he  had 
deliberately  rejected  idealistic  impulses  as  unreal 
and  unsubstantial.  By  long  process  of  habitua- 
tion  the  commonplace  exercises  of  his  daily  rounds 
of  affairs  have  simply  displaced  the  more  ideal 
and  poetic  passions  of  life.  He  has  lost  the  art 
of  aspiring,  of  poetizing,  of  enthusing  over 
things  unseen  and  inestimable.  In  all  these  re- 
gions of  finer  impalpable  culture  he  is  a  stranger, 
awkward,  nonplussed  and  indifferent. 

It  is  commonly  alleged  that  these  indifferents 
are  in  the  majority  in  modern  life.  Certainly 
their  case  is  most  grievous;  they  are  of  all  men 
most  miserable.  But  their  tribe,  as  I  believe,  is 
very  rare  indeed.  Many  men  by  their  habitual 
silence  and  by  their  regular  avoidance  of  religious 
services  appear  to  belong  to  this  tribe  of  indif- 
ferents. But  in  fact  these  men  of  affairs  are  in 
countless  instances  concealing  minds  that  are  long- 
ing for  the  Eternal.  Anyone  who  feels  with 
sympathetic  touch  the  pulse  of  our  modern  life 


8       RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

will  find  that  life  not  dull  and  sluggish  at  all  but 
deeply  alive  to  the  things  of  the  spirit,  wearied 
of  the  world's  practical  materialism,  sick  of  all 
its  sad  infidelity.  The  simple  fact  is  now,  as  it 
has  ever  been  in  periods  of  desolating  materialism, 
that  men  on  all  sides  are  minded  to  revolt  toward 
simpler  and  diviner  ways  of  living  their  days.  I 
have  learned  in  passing  among  men  that  the  eter- 
nal verities  are  being  sought  in  the  most  unlikely 
places  and  by  the  most  unlikely  representatives 
of  our  modern  life.  It  is  profoundly  significant 
that  men  of  practical  mind  and  of  worldly  re- 
sources are  quietly  joining  the  ranks  of  life's 
idealists,  and  are  wanting  somehow  to  replace  the 
church  in  its  former  position  of  jurisdiction  over 
the  lives  of  men. 

Men's  silence  then,  as  they  will  tell  you  in 
hours  of  unwonted  confidence,  is  owing  to  no 
indifference  of  mind  in  matters  religious  but 
solely  to  their  sense  of  unfitness  to  discuss  the 
idealistic  impulses  fermenting  in  their  lives.  They 
are  indifferent,  I  imagine,  to  the  church's  ofttimes 
sensational  or  apologetic  handling  of  ideals  which 
in  them  lie  too  deep  for  utterance.  In  these  mat- 
ters the  average  layman  is  often  vastly  deeper 
and  more  serious,  alas,  than  the  minister  of  re- 
ligion itself.  The  "  indifference  of  the  laity,"  I 
must  believe,  is  due  in  large  measure  to  a  simple 
weariness  on  the  part  of  serious  men  with  the 
preacher's  timid,  or  silly,  practical  tampering  with 
religion's  sacred  offices.  It  is  pertinent  that 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND        9 

where  there  has  been  honest  preaching,  simple  and 
abandoned,  with  nothing  concealed  or  withheld 
between  preacher  and  people ;  where  there  has  been 
no  timidity  nor  sensational  clap-trap,  but  a  free, 
unafraid  and  unashamed  giving  of  his  whole, 
honest  and  solemn  person  in  the  preacher's  weekly 
meditation  before  his  people ;  where  there  has  been 
no  apology  nor  nervous  self-defense  but  simple 
and  straight-forward  reflection  upon  the  eternal 
instincts  and  passions  of  life  —  in  these  circum- 
stances the  layman  has  always  listened  gladly. 
For  through  the  preacher's  common  words  he  has 
felt  his  own  silences  somehow  become  vocal  with 
the  soul's  natural  and  eternal  harmonies.  Brooks, 
Beecher,  Hale,  Gladden,  Savage  —  such  giants  of 
God  have  lived  and  still  do  live  but  never  con- 
front an  indifferent  laity. 

The  instant  success  of  great,  yet  simple  preach- 
ing is  evidence  against  the  claim  that  the  indif- 
ferents,  the  unconscious  materialists,  dominate  our 
modern  life.  The  average  layman  is  spiritually 
modest ;  he  does  not  easily  expose  the  secret  places 
of  his  inner  life.  He  is  spiritually  sensitive;  he 
will  not  subject  the  really  deep  problems  of  his 
life  to  the  buffoonery  and  tomfoolery  too  often 
exhibited  in  the  modern  pulpit.  None  the  less 
he  is  desperately  in  earnest.  Great  crowds  of  his 
kind  are  awaiting  a  voice  of  prophecy  in  our 
modern  world  —  a  prophet  who  shall  command 
that  the  gates  of  the  church  be  lifted  up,  that 
the  portals  of  the  larger  Life  be  thrown  open  to 


10      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

admit  without  condition  or  apology  all  those  who 
are  now  suffering  for  its  atmosphere  of  freedom 
and  peace  and  joy. 

We  need  not  expect  that  in  the  long  run  this 
larger  and  deeper  need  of  the  modern  mind  will 
be  satisfied  with  the  discussion  of  social  and  ethical 
problems  now  in  vogue  among  many  popular 
preachers.  After  all  the  average  layman  is  bet- 
ter able  than  the  average  minister  to  deal  with 
these  more  practical  problems  of  life.  In  an 
hour's  reading  of  some  authoritative  book  or 
magazine  the  layman  with  his  background  of 
worldly  knowledge  will  inform  himself  more  gen- 
uinely upon  questions  of  social  and  practical 
morality  than  by  listening  to  an  inexpert,  morn- 
ing sermon  dealing  with  such  matters.  A  meager 
week  or  two  of  reading  and  reflection  upon  the 
part  of  the  preacher  and  his  sermon  is  ready! 
But  the  inexperience  and  practical  awkwardness 
of  it  all  shriek  at  you  from  every  page  and 
paragraph  of  his  labored  discourse.  With  the 
rare  exception  of  men  in  the  pulpit  whose  pre- 
vious experience  of  life  especially  entitles  them 
to  speak  upon  "  problems  of  the  day  "  the  min- 
ister is  grotesquely  ineffectual  when  dealing  with 
such  questions.  All  his  habits  of  life  and 
thought,  all  his  instincts,  if  he  be  indeed  an  in- 
stinctive prophet  of  the  larger  Life,  unfit  him  to 
grasp  directly  the  "  affairs  "  of  his  laymen.  They 
respect  him  for  attempting  these  matters ; —  any- 
thing were  better  than  the  traditional  and  tire- 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      11 

some  "  doctrinal "  sermon !  But  they  like  him 
best  of  all  when  he  is  discharging  his  peculiarly 
ministerial  office:  saturating  their  souls  with  an 
atmosphere  of  mystic  Manhood  such  that  their 
practical  solutions  of  the  problems  of  the  day 
will  be  in  fact  ideal.  This  is  something  mystic 
and  intangible,  I  grant.  But  it  is  the  great  and 
lasting  thing  in  all  apostolic  and  prophetic 
preaching.  Anything  short  of  this,  anything 
more  practical  than  this,  however  excellent  and 
useful  it  may  be  in  its  way,  is  not  in  the  province 
of  the  preacher.  To  know  practically  and  in  de- 
tail the  conditions  and  problems  in  the  life  of 
the  layman  is  hardly  the  preacher's  business.  He 
cannot  hope  to  "  win  men  "  by  becoming  himself 
a  layman.  Not  by  awkward  dealing  with  prac- 
tical problems  remote  from  his  proper  instincts 
and  temperament,  but  by  somehow  touching  each 
week,  simply  and  solemnly,  the  things  the  layman 
himself  in  all  his  spiritual  silence,  modesty  and 
sensitiveness  is  thinking  on  will  the  minister  of 
a  larger  Life  serve  the  modern  man  in  his  deeper 
nature. 

m 

Meanwhile,  there  are  many  quiet,  unobtrusive 
ministers  over  the  country  who  cannot  be  fairly 
accused  of  thus  secularizing  their  pulpits ; —  a 
large  body  of  faithful  men  who,  unknown  to 
fame,  are  yet  leading  their  people  along  the  simple 
paths  of  righteousness  they  and  their  fathers  have 
trodden.  To  me  there  is  a  certain  pathos  in  the 


12      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

transparent  consecration  of  these  men.  They 
man  the  pulpits  of  their  fathers  and  defend  their 
fathers'  faith.  By  the  great  test  of  practice  that 
faith  has  worked  well  in  their  cases.  It  has 
made  them  gentler,  honester,  more  generous  in 
their  life  with  their  fellows;  it  has  kept  their 
faces  toward  the  Eternal.  They  make  no  skilful 
apologetic  and  learned  defence  of  these  ancestral 
traditions.  Their  argument  has  in  it  the  deeper 
ring  of  a  mystic  conviction.  They  are  simple, 
sincere,  untutored,  unspoiled.  They  are  in  the 
direct  line  of  apostolic  succession.  Their  Chris- 
tian culture  belongs  by  right  to  those  apostolic 
and  early  patristic  periods  before  the  Christian 
experience  had  been  spoiled  by  "  Christian  Evi- 
dences "  and  "  Sacred  Oratory." 

By  right ;  jbut  the  trouble  is  that  there  lurks 
in  the  minds  of  these  admirably  sincere  defenders 
of  the  fathers'  faith  a  half-suspected  confusion; 
a  confusion  of  their  natural,  unspoiled  impulses 
of  religion  with  certain  of  the  outgrown  dogmas 
and  symbols  in  which  these  great  human  passions 
once  clothed  themselves.  They  retain  the  prime 
passions  of  religion:  a  sense  of  the  eternal,  the 
joys  of  divine  companionship,  the  complete  sub- 
jection of  their  human  life  to  an  eternal  law  of 
righteousness;  but  they  confusedly  express  these 
deep  experiences  in  terms  no  longer  fitting  the 
present  depth  and  freedom  of  such  great  com- 
munions between  the  human  and  the  larger  Life. 

( This  confusion  of  mind  among  modern  church- 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      13 

goers  is  very  widespread.  The  thing  which  attracts 
and  holds  them  in  regular  attendance  upon  services 
of  the  church  is  clearly  not  the  doctrines  therein 
set  forth;  it  must  be  rather  the  transparent  and 
refreshing  sincerity  of  the  preacher  himself  upon 
whose  honor  they  are  glad  to  stake  their  own 
eternal  lives.  He  preaches  fiction  as  if  it  were 
truth!  for  to  him  it  is  truth,  sacred  and  everlast- 
ing. To  him  and  his  people  your  difficulties  with 
this  or  that  dogmatic  conception  are  shallow  and 
impertinent.  The  deep  and  pertinent  thing,  they 
say,  is  that  the  dogmas  do  work,  do  fit  the  life 
of  the  world,  do  sweeten  the  atmosphere  of  the 
home !  Even  so,  these  men  believe  deep  of  God, 
eternity,  human  destiny  and  the  like  —  things 
World-wide  and  race-wide  in  their  value ;  but  they 
confuse  these  eternal  things  in  religion  with  the 
transient  dogmas  and  symbolic  practices  of  their 
historic  sect. 

The  inevitable  result  of  this  endeavor  to  save 
and  honor  outworn  dogmas  under  the  shadow  of 
religion's  eternal  truths  is  a  narrowing  and  shal- 
lowing of  those  eternal  values  themselves. 
Thus  men  of  this  group  I  call  "  confused  "  be- 
lieve very  practically  and  deeply  in  God  but  only 
in  him  as  revealed  in  the  Christ.  They  believe 
in  eternity  but  only  as  a  region  wherein  lies  the 
Kingdom  of  God  planned  and  prepared  by  his 
risen  Son.  They  believe  in  universal  salvation 
but  only  because  every  man  must  eventually  adopt 
the  "  plan "  which  their  peculiar  priest  or 


14      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

preacher  sets  forth  as  "  scriptural."  They  hold 
that  God's  revelation  of  himself  is  free  and  uni- 
versal but  the  culmination  and  final  form  of  that 
revelation  is  after  all  contained  within  the  Chris- 
tian bible  as  interpreted  by  the  scholars  of  their 
persuasion.  And  so  on  in  an  apparently  hope- 
less and  endless  confusion  of  the  visible  dogmas 
of  human  history  with  the  invisible  realities  of 
the  larger  Life. 

This  confusion  of  mind  and,  if  I  may  express 
a  kindly,  though  frank  judgment,  this  spiritual 
superficiality  is  the  most  conspicuous  phenomenon 
in  modern  Christian  circles.  It  is  all  so  sincere, 
in  spots  so  mightily  stimulating  and  helpful! 
Strong  men  deliberately  pay  the  price  of  intel- 
lectual confusion  for  the  precious  freight  of  prac- 
tical goods  conveyed  to  them  within  the  old  wrap- 
pings of  a  former  faith.  But  it  is  all  so  super- 
ficial and  misleading!  Listen  to  a  few  sermons 
or  read  a  few  of  the  books  of  the  more  notable 
of  these  sincere  apologists  of  primitive  Chris- 
tianity, these  leaders  of  Christian  peoples  "  back 
to  Christ  " !  If  your  mind  be  alert  in  such  mat- 
ters you  will  easily  mark  the  very  paragraph  and 
in  some  instances  the  very  sentence  in  which  the 
speaker  or  writer's  thought  unconsciously  turns 
the  corner  from  the  essential  to  the  unessential, 
from  the  spontaneous  to  the  dogmatic,  from  the 
inner  life  to  its  external  forms,  from  the  eternal 
to  the  transient  things  of  religion.  It  all  aims 
at  the  unspoiled  experience  of  apostolic  and  early 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      15 

patristic  Christianity ;  it  would  delve  beneath  the 
debris  of  dogma  in  order  to  reclaim  Christianity 
in  its  primitive  and  eternal  forms. 

In  the  hands  of  the  leading  exponents  of  this 
primitive,  pragmatic  Christianity,  in  men  trained 
in  the  school  of  the  incomparable  Ritschl,  the  mix- 
ing of  essential  with  unessential  elements  is  in  a 
high  degree  expert.  They  are  far  subtler  than 
the  more  naive  preachers  of  the  fathers'  faith. 
But  the  confusion  in  their  cases  is  nevertheless 
very  real  and  to  my  mind  very  grievous.  They 
commend  to  men  an  interpretation  of  Christian 
culture  in  the  very  highest  degree  plausible  and 
tempting  but  which  clear-thinking  men,  it  may 
be  of  the  next  generation,  will  be  apt  to  reject  as 
too  unscientific  and  unmystic  for  their  own  needs. 

For,  notwithstanding  denials  to  the  contrary, 
men  must  see  sooner  or  later  that  this  appeal  to 
primitive  Christianity  as  a  practically  final  form 
of  religious  experience  does  imply  that  the  aposto- 
lic and  early  patristic  Christians  were  peculiar, 
not  to  say  inspired,  in  the  inner  springs  of  their 
religious  being.  This  is  of  course  most  vigor- 
ously denied  by  those  who  defend  the  Christian 
religion  as  "  final".  They  tell  us  very  clearly 
indeed  that  by  the  "  final  elements  "  in  Christian 
experience  they  do  not  mean  anything  peculiar 
to  Paul  or  his  time  nor  to  the  early  fathers  and 
their  times ;  that  they  aim  rather  to  revive  in  men's 
minds  the  eternal  values  in  the  religion  called 
Christian.  In  defending  their  view  of  the  Chris- 


16      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

tian  religion  against  this  charge  of  historic  lim- 
itation they  have  even  gone  to  the  extreme  of  de- 
claring that  if  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  the  source  of 
historic  Christianity,  had  never  lived,  the  things 
they  affirm  as  final  in  Christianity  would  still  be 
binding  upon  men ! 

But  at  this  juncture  the  clear-minded  man  al- 
ways rises  to  a  point  of  enquiry;  nor  can  he  be 
silenced  by  the  decision  that  his  questions  are 
mere  "  quibbles  ".  He  asks,  for  example,  in  what 
conceivable  sense  this  "  pragmatic  "  Christianity 
is  a  revival  of  primitive  Christianity.  "  Really 
now,"  he  says,  "  if  you  emasculate  historic  Chris- 
tianity, depleting  it  not  merely  of  its  later  dogmas 
—  every  one  in  these  days  seems  glad  to  let  them 
go !  —  but  also  of  all  its  recorded  maxims  of 
conduct  and  even  of  its  very  founder,  is  this  not 
tantamount  to  saying  that  these  eternal  values  are 
not  in  any  sense  whatsoever  Christian?  Are  not 
these  values  genuinely  eternal?  Are  they  not  the 
birth-right  of  every  age  and  of  every  race?  Are 
they  not  more  properly  conceived  as  mystic  than 
as  historic  ?  Would  there  be  by  this  test  any  dif- 
ference between  the  Christian's  essential  Chris- 
tianity and,  say,  the  Buddhist's  essential 
Buddhism?" 

I  have  some  friends  of  the  Hindu  race,  men  of 
exquisite  culture  and  character.  I  used  to  say 
playfully  that  they  were  better  "  Christians " 
than  I.  Would  I  not  have  spoken  more  clearly 
and  genuinely  had  I  said  "  They  are  better  men 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      17 

than  I,  living  closer  to  the  eternal,  expressing  bet- 
ter the  larger  Life,  imitating  more  fully  that  mys- 
tic Man  envisaged  by  all  religions  as  eternally  real 
beyond  the  confines  of  historic  humanity "? 
When  this  complete  transcendence  by  religious  ex- 
perience of  all  actual  or  possible  historic  persons 
or  races,  forms  or  dogmas,  is  clearly  understood 
the  group  of  minds  I  have  called  "  confused  "  will 
cease  to  prosper  and  multiply  their  kind. 

"  But "  I  have  friends  who  say  "  all  this  is 
beating  the  air.  We've  got  to  call  this  experience 
of  religion  something.  We  who  are  Christian  by 
birth  and  heritage  call  it  by  the  name  which  is 
familiar  to  us.  Let  Buddhist,  Brahman,  Mo- 
hammedan and  the  rest  denote  the  same  thing, 
if  you  will,  by  terms  which  are  congenital  with 
them.  Let's  not  quibble  over  words." 

But  this  refusal  to  "  quibble  "  may  do  a  vast 
deal  of  mischief  in  the  world.  Practical  mischief, 
too, —  if  clear  and  genuine  open-mindedness  is  to 
be  the  test.  Say  what  you  please  to  the  contrary, 
the  fact  is  that  if  you  insist  upon  calling  your 
experience  "  Christian "  then  you  remove  from 
your  inner  circle  your  friend  of  another  race,  or 
perhaps  your  friend  of  a  broader  scientific  and 
philosophic  culture  whose  religious  experiences 
simply  have  not  the  historic  origin  nor  the  historic 
simplicity  of  the  experience  you  insist  upon  call- 
ing "  Christian  ". 

It  is  all  a  matter  of  clearness,  you  see.  And 
when  you  consider  that  in  another  generation  or 


18      EELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

two  all  civilized  races  by  virtue  of  international 
wars,  councils,  peace  conferences  and  the  like  will 
have  become  in  matters  of  secular  and  ethical  cul- 
ture genuinely  acquainted  with  each  other;  and 
that  the  average  man  by  virtue  of  education  in 
the  cosmos-wide  matters  of  science  and  philosophy 
will  have  broadened  his  horizon  out  beyond  the 
historic  places  and  times  of  humankind  —  when 
you  consider  this  perhaps  remote  but  nonethe- 
less approaching  state  of  human  society  your 
inability  at  this  time  to  dispense  with  historic 
terms  becomes  a  really  practical  impediment  in 
the  way  of  human  comity.  The  Christian  re- 
ligion, as  Christian,  is  historic,  ethnic.  The  time 
is  perhaps  remote  but  it  approaches  when  Chris- 
tianity, as  historic,  will  be  classed  among  "  re- 
ligions of  the  past  ".  There  will  be  then  a  larger 
race  and  a  more  mystic  religious  experience,  an 
experience  of  invisible  Manhood  companioning  all 
the  lives  of  all  men.  What  men  of  that  day  will 
call  their  religion  God  only  knows.  Let  us  hope 
it  will  be  so  awful  and  so  practically  mystic  that 
they  will  not  call  it  anything.  Perhaps  its  God 
will  be  that  "  nameless  "  God  one  encounters  here 
or  there  in  every  great  religion,  that  invisible 
Man  one  always  fronts  sooner  or  later  in  some 
hidden  path  of  his  own  inner  life. 

It  has  already  come  to  pass  that  one  feature 
of  primitive  Christianity,  long  regarded  as 
"  final ",  is  seen  to  have  been  based  upon  a  con- 
fusion of  the  historic  with  the  eternal  in  religion. 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      19 

I  refer  to  the  alleged  experience  of  the  Christ 
and  God  as  one.  It  is  trying  for  us  of  the 
modern  mind  to  enter  into  the  genius  and  mean- 
ing of  this  unconscious  confusion  at  the  source 
of  Christian  experience.  Back  of  us  are  some 
centuries  of  "  trinitarian "  controversy.  The 
ideas  of  God  and  the  Christ  lie  so  adjacent  in  the 
mind  of  the  primitive  Christian  as  to  be  prac- 
tically, genuinely  indistinguishable:  to  him  God 
and  Christ  stood  for  no  disparity  of  divine  ex- 
perience; they  were  felt  as  practically,  genuinely 
"  one  ".  It  is  as  if  in  the  beginning  the  spirit 
of  Jesus  had  completely  invaded  the  minds  of  his 
followers,  transpiercing  them  with  a  thought  of 
himself  just  like  his  own  experience  of  himself 
and  the  Father  as  one.  But  in  our  minds,  whether 
for  better  or  for  worse,  these  two  ideas  are  sund- 
ered: the  idea  of  God,  alas!  has  come  to  stand 
for  all  that  is  mighty,  majestic,  austere  and  awful 
in  life ;  the  idea  of  Christ  for  all  that  is  friendly, 
forgiving  and  sympathetic.  The  two  experiences 
once  well-nigh  identical  —  the  experience  of 
Christ  shading  mystically  and  imperceptibly  into 
the  presence  of  God  —  cannot  naturally  be 
brought  together  and  confused  in  the  modern 
mind. 

And  yet  this  is  the  express  aim  of  certain  mod- 
ern Christian  pragmatists:  to  reclaim  this  early 
experience  of  God  and  the  Christ  as  one.  Their 
argument  is  practical,  as  they  see  it.  Ritschl 
somewhere  says  "  The  deity  of  Jesus  is  a  value- 


30      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

judgment " :  this  early  confusion  of  Jesus  and 
God  is  valid  so  long  as  it  works;  it  is  true  now 
as  then  because  through  this  Christing  of  God 
men  are  brought  into  living  touch  with  the  other- 
wise ineffable  being  of  God; — by  Christing  God 
and  in  no  other  way.  Christ  is  the  sole  practical 
point  of  contact  between  the  human  and  the 
divine.  All  your  logical,  scientific  and  phil- 
osophic difficulties,  says  Ritschl  once  more,  fail 
to  enter  that  supernal  world,  that  Kingdom  of 
God,  that  inner  life  of  the  spirit  where  Christ 
does  actually  work  as  God. 

It  is  enormously  plausible,  this  attempt  to  re- 
store in  the  modern  mind  the  primitive  experience 
of  Christ  and  God  as  one.  But  it  is  confusing! 
It  really  does  not  work  in  the  type  of  mind  I 
call  "  modern  ".  Its  working  depends  upon  the 
confusion  being  in  his  case  as  unconscious  as  it 
was  in  the  primitive  experience  itself.  But  to- 
day men's  condition  of  mind  in  many  instances 
is  such  that  the  confusion  is  consciously  felt. 
The  modern  man,  moderately  well-read  as  he  is 
in  popular  philosophy  and  above  all  in  popular 
science,  means  by  "  God  "  a  heaven-wide  energy 
of  being.  He  has  learned  something  of  the  in- 
comparable quantities  and  qualities  of  That  he 
now  calls  God.  To  him  Christ,  even  granting 
him  to  be  the  type  of  the  divine  in  the  human, 
is  felt  not  as  one  with  but  as  at  the  opposite  pole 
from  This  he  now  calls  God. 

The  difficulty  at  this  point  is  beginning  to  be 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      21 

felt  by  the  clearer  minded  of  those  who  are  now 
celebrating  the  Christ  as  a  practical  force  in 
modern  life.  To  meet  the  difficulty  they  have 
originated  —  or  rather  revived — a,  conception 
of  the  Christ  as  "  mystic  "  or  "  cosmic."  That 
Christ,  they  say,  is  not  the  historic  Jesus  nor  the 
Messiah  of  Jewish  expectation:  as  cosmic  he  ex- 
isted in  the  beginning ;  he  is  "  wisdom,"  coeternal 
with  the  Father,  the  eternal  Son  of  God  and  Com- 
panion of  man,  of  equal  power  with  God.  As 
cosmic  Christ  is  the  God  of  the  modern  mind  only 
with  an  added  dimension  of  practical  understand- 
ing and  love. 

But  then  why  not  call  the  cosmic  Christ 
"  God "  ?  Why,  once  more,  this  reprehensible 
process  of  confusion  between  an  historic  term  and 
an  eternal  meaning?  Christ  thus  becomes  gen- 
uinely universal  and  mystical.  This  Christ,  this 
God  of  mystic  oneness  can  by  the  modern  mind 
no  longer  be  confused,  except  consciously  and 
dishonorably,  with  the  Jesus  or  even  the  God  of 
historic  Christianity.  He  is  rather  the  One  of 
the  ages ;  the  unseen,  unknowable,  undefinable,  in- 
comparable source  of  all  divine  being;  the  Pres- 
ence in  conscious  science  and  philosophy;  the  in- 
visible Companion  of  all  human  life;  the  Eternal 
of  the  modern  mind. 

Ritschl  says  that  the  "  deity  of  Jesus  is  a 
value- j  udgment ":  it  works  well  to  confuse  Jesus 
with  God.  The  modern  man,  equally  pragmatic, 
says  "  The  deity  of  man,  or  the  Manhood  of 


22      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

deity  is  a  value- judgment !  " :  it  works  well  to 
assume  an  invisible  divinity  present  in  every  man, 
an  invisible  humanity  present  in  every  god.  Thus 
without  confusion  the  modern  mind  does  indeed 
gain  all  that  has  eternal  value  in  the  Christ-idea 
and  infinitely  more;  for  in  its  view  every  man  is 
a  potential  god,  every  God  a  cosmic  Man. 

IV 

The  "  modern  "  mind,  then,  as  I  see  it,  is  by 
no  means  the  average  mind.  Most  of  the  men  one 
encounters  in  a  day's  j  ourney  belong  to  the  group 
of  minds  we  have  been  considering  as  "  con- 
fused " :  they  would  pour  the  new  wine  of  modern 
culture  into  the  old  bottles  of  Judaic  ethics  and 
Christian  religion.  By  "  modern  "  I  mean  the 
rare  and  sincerely  open  mind,  the  man  conscious 
of  himself  in  relation  to  a  full  modern  culture, 
unbound  by  historic  forms  and  terms;  his  open- 
ness is  natural  and  unaffected ;  with  his  whole  per- 
son and  without  turning  back  he  faces  the 
prospect  ahead;  his  is  a  spirit  of  iron  constitu- 
tion, radical  to  the  very  marrow,  finding  ravishing 
joy  in  trying  to  the  heights  and  valleys  of  being 
the  wings  of  his  spirit,  apt  to  reject  as  artificial 
and  restrictive  the  familiar  terms  and  dogmas  of 
the  historic  church,  eager  to  follow  in  the  pur- 
suits of  science  and  philosophy  —  in  a  word,  un- 
afraid, unashamed  and  open  minded. 

To  follow  the  movements  of  this  unaffectedly 
open  minded  man  within  the  last  half  century  is 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      28 

indeed  a  stimulating  and  uplifting  exercise.  Of 
course  he  has  had  in  his  train  a  motley  following 
of  noisy  cynics  and  sceptics.  But  he  himself  is 
a  nobleman  —  clean  and  pure  in  his  mind ;  eager 
and  sensitive  in  his  soul;  searching  always  for  a 
positive  and  honorable  experience  of  things 
eternal;  wanting  and  ready  at  every  turn  in  the 
spirit  path  to  stand  silent  and  conquered  in  the 
presence  of  That  he  may  yet  call  God. 

On  his  honor  the  modern  man  cannot  accept 
any  historic  religion  as  final,  or  even  as  express- 
ing essentially  the  height  and  depth  of  his  modern 
insight.  In  his  view  all  institutional  religion  is 
heavy,  saturated  with  past  forms,  myths,  un- 
truths, a  dead  weight;  its  terms  somehow  are 
restrictive  and  misleading,  apt  to  damn  all  spon- 
taneity of  spirit.  In  any  atmosphere  of  conces- 
sion to  this  or  that  particular  form  of  religious 
experience  our  man  of  iron  and  radical  constitu- 
tion cannot  abide;  he  feels  oppressed  somehow  by 
suggestions  and  meanings  he  cannot  honorably 
favor. 

All  this  merely  reports  a  bald  fact.  It  boots 
not  so  far  as  the  fact  is  concerned,  to  accuse  this 
modern  mind  of  being  over-radical;  or  to  com- 
plain that  such  a  man  is  in  fact  ignorant  of  the 
eternal  values  rescued  by  "  criticism  "  from  the 
dogma-wreckage  of  historic  Christianity.  As  I 
have  already  suggested,  these  "  eternal  "  elements, 
in  so  far  as  they  are  genuinely  that,  are  not 
historic  at  all  but  mystically,  invisibly  universal. 


24      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

To  hold  them,  thus  final,  as  peculiarly  creditable 
to  any  historic  person  or  age  is  once  more 
"  confusing  ". 

But  one  need  not  repeat  the  argument  now. 
The  fact  suffices :  the  modern  man  by  temperament 
faces  ahead  with  his  whole  person.  He  is  a  bad 
historian  and  critic,  if  you  please;  an  unloyal 
child  of  a  long  line  of  culture  that  bred  him 
"  modern."  In  all  this  he  is  no  doubt  eccentric 
and  radical;  but  he  is  true  to  the  marrow.  He 
faces  forward  bearing  in  his  manner  and  spirit  a 
wealth  of  past  religious  experience;  but  claiming 
all  this  heritage  unconsciously,  just  as  a  child 
unwittingly  passes  on  through  his  person  the 
subtle  breath  of  his  fathers. 

Is  he  then  a  Christian?  My  readers  will  re- 
call two  or  three  notable  heresy  trials  in  which 
this  question  was  asked  of  certain  offenders  who 
were  then  in  process  of  becoming  "  modern ". 
These  men  invariably  replied  that  they  were  be- 
yond doubt  Christian,  or  even  "  Baptist  ",  "  Pres- 
byterian "  or  Gott  weiss  was  sonst!  in  the  "  final  ", 
"  primitive  ",  "  permanent  "  sense  though  per- 
haps not  in  the  "  sectarian  ",  "  transient  ",  "  in- 
stitutional "  meaning  of  the  word.  Now  it  is 
hard  for  the  man  of  the  modern  mind  to  under- 
stand these  subtle  defenses  of  the  modern  heretic 
and  perhaps  even  harder  for  him  to  be  patient 
withal.  It  is  so  painfully  uncertain  what  these 
primitive  religions  and  sects  were;  and,  anyway, 
so  certain  that  whatever  they  were  they  are  not 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      25 

now,  nor  are  likely  ever  to  become  again!  It  is 
too  much  to  expect  that  any  Christian  sect  or 
even  Christianity  itself  can  ever  wholly  cancel 
and  disown  as  spurious  the  hard  and  dogmatic 
features  accumulated  during  the  centuries  of  their 
past.  It  is  not  to  be  expected  and  for  that  mat- 
ter not  to  be  desired  that  time  will  turn  backward 
and  make  a  man  a  child  again  even  for  a  night; 
not  to  be  expected  nor  desired  that  the  human  life 
will  in  any  important  respect  return  to  the  child- 
hood of  the  race.  But  just  that  is  substantially 
what  the  defense  the  modern  heretic  involves  and 
recommends !  —  the  grafting  of  modern  culture 
upon  the  apostolic  and  early  patristic  stem  of 
Christian  culture. 

The  man  I  call  modern,  whether  for  good  or  ill, 
is  a  man  without  a  conscious  history;  he  is  with- 
out any  religious  traditions;  3ike  John  Stuart 
Mill,  as  he  describes  himself  somewhere  in  his 
autobiography:  whereas  most  men  are  in  the  po- 
sition of  painfully  breaking  through  the  shell  of 
religious  tradition  he  is  in  the  peculiar,  free-born 
position  of  never  having  had  any  religion  at  all; 
of  facing  reality  with  perfect  and  unconscious 
freedom ;  with  no  chip  of  the  past  hampering  even 
the  subconscious  parts  of  his  soul.  He  is  a  re- 
ligious outcast  who  cannot  be  brought  to  trial; 
making  no  official  professions  he  is  not  open  to 
question  by  religion's  professors.  He  has  a  pro- 
found respect,  perhaps  a  sincerer  appreciation, 
for  the  deeper  things  of  that  religion  called  Chris- 


26      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

tian;  but  I  imagine  that  if  brought  to  trial  and 
asked  if  he  were  a  Christian  he  would  promptly 
reply  "No!"  Nor  would  he  be  likely  to  pros- 
trate his  high  spirit  by  explaining  his  answer  be- 
fore men  capable  of  asking  such  a  question. 

In  all  this  our  modern  man  has  endured  much 
hardship  and  contumely,  many  weary  hours  of 
spiritual  loneliness.  He  has  imagined  himself  cut 
off  from  religion  not  alone  in  its  historic  forms 
but  in  its  deeper  contacts  as  well.  Failing  to 
connect  with  any  of  the  visible  gods  of  human 
history,  deploring  all  these  superstitions  of  the 
past,  he  has  missed  the  invisible,  eternal  realities. 
He  has  in  many  instances  resorted  to  humanitarian 
morality  and  in  its  gracious  atmosphere  has  found 
rest  for  his  larger  soul.  He  has  fallen  back  upon 
himself  as  a  partial  and  yet  faithful  expression 
of  a  future,  ideal  humanity.  With  no  sense  of 
divine  companionship,  with  no  eternal  prospect 
or  perspective  for  his  own  person,  he  has  yet 
sought  to  work  out  a  happy  destiny  for  his  fel- 
lows-to-be. He  has  in  hot  passion  conceived  a 
"  religion  of  humanity  ".  He  has  become  to  the 
core  humanitarian  in  his  life's  processes. 

In  this  he  has,  as  it  seems  to  me,  found  a 
practical  ideal  incomparably  superior  to  the  dog- 
mas of  fear  and  false  faith  too  often  identified 
with  religion.  He  has  saved  as  it  were  the  dis- 
embodied soul  of  religion,  the  soul  of  goodness 
and  love  in  all  things  human.  Such  a  man  is 
trustworthy  enough;  he  is  a  much  sweeter  and 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      27 

friendlier  companion  in  life's  way  than  the  com- 
monplace bigot  in  religion.  And  yet  somehow 
he  makes  you  sad  when  you  join  him  on  his  way. 
He  lives  in  such  loneliness  of  spirit!  His  hu- 
manitarian heroism  has  in  it  the  nobility  of  tears, 
the  tenderness  of  a  silent  and  constant  sorrow. 
His  Great  Father  is  dead!  Standing  now  alone 
he  would  himself  vouch  for  humanity;  he  would 
in  his  small  measure  restore  something  of  the  in- 
finite righteousness  and  love  lost  in  the  death  of 
humanity's  God.  The  moral  law  after  all  is  man- 
made  and  man-maintained,  he  says.  Has  it  no 
sanction  of  any  higher  "  power  not  ourselves  that 
makes  for  righteousness  "  ?  Very  well  then  ac- 
quit yourselves  like  men;  yea,  like  very  gods! 
Is  the  law  of  love  likewise  a  purely  human  in- 
stitution? Very  good  then;  guard  all  the  more 
jealously  the  great  institution  of  love  and  hu- 
manity builded  by  the  faithfulness  and  purity  of 
these  finer  men,  risen  from  the  beasts  of  the  field. 
"  The  gods  are  all  dead  "  ?  Then  put  a  Man 
on  their  high  throne.  Poor,  insane  Nietzsche, 
fugitwus  errans,  was  after  all  the  perfect  prophet 
of  this  sadder,  more  heroic  humanitarianism. 
"  The  gods  are  all  dead ;  but,  behold,  there  comes 
a  Man!" 

I  would  not  presume  to  address  these  modern 
minds,  did  I  not  belong  to  their  fraternity.  With 
my  brethren  of  the  spontaneous,  open  mind  in 
view  I  have  on  some  occasions  spoken  the  words 
now  brought  together  in  this  little  volume.  It  is 


£8  RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 
I 

as  it  were  a  personal  confession.  It  has  one  sole 
aim:  to  show,  if  it  may,  how  a  man  of  radical 
constitution  may  yet  regain  an  honorable  and 
positive  experience  of  things  eternal ;  how  he  may 
fully  cultivate  within  his  modern  mind  that  sense 
of  eternal,  moral  companionship  which  is  indeed 
the  invisible  genius  of  every  "  religion  of  human- 
ity ".  Take  seriously  that  exquisite  structure 
you  call  "  Man  ",  my  friend ;  give  your  inner 
vision  of  him  full  play;  really  believe  in  him; 
spread  his  mystic  humanity  over  and  beyond  the 
stars  up  there !  Add  to  him  an  infinite  dimension, 
of  human  things  like  love  and  patience  and  hope- 
fulness! And  you  will  behold  That  I  call 
"  God  ".  This  is  what  your  religion  of  humanity 
unconsciously  means,  is  it  not,  brethren  of  the 
humane  mind?  God!  too  unseen  to  be  dogmatic- 
ally defined  or  in  his  fulness  revealed  in  time; 
yet  too  human  to  be  comprehended  in  the  de- 
liberate language  of  science  and  philosophy? 
God,  a  Man,  cosmic  and  yet  friendly?  an  uni- 
versal energy  unconscious  in  stones  and  stars  yet 
conscious  in  men?  divine  yet  human?  God  yet  a 
Man? 

v 

Still,  as  I  pen  these  lines,  my  spirit  is  checked 
by  a  difficulty  which  always  disturbs  the  surface 
of  one's  deeper  experience  of  his  own  mystic 
humanity.  It  is  a  difficulty  of  method  and  tem- 
perament. The  more  hard-headed  and  dispas- 
sionate of  these  religionists  of  humanity  will  un- 


EELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      29 

derstand  and  applaud  this  vision  of  the  God- 
Man.  "  But,"  they  will  everlastingly  remind  you, 
w  it  is  no  vision  of  what  is  but  rather  of  what  is  to 
be.  If  in  your  defense  of  God  as  human  you 
declare  not  merely  what  God  would  be  in  such 
a  case  but  that  he  is,  you  are  no  better  than 
the  veriest  fanatic  and  dreamer  in  religion.  What 
w  religion  indeed  but  just  this  dogmatic  or,  if 
you  will,  mystic  creating  of  gods  in  the  image 
of  men?  Some  day  you  too  will  follow  your 
own  God-Man  brokenheartedly  to  that  vast  cem- 
etery of  the  soul  where  rest  men's  dream- 
gods  surrounded  by  all  the  sacred  relics  of  the 
past." 

Once  I  spoke  of  this  invisible  humanity  of  God 
in  the  hearing  of  Felix  Adler.  In  an  address 
following  my  own  he  approved  what  he  called  the 
"  perfect  music  "  in  this  service  of  elevation,  this 
exalting  of  a  purely  ideal  Man  to  a  level  of  strict 
reality.  But,  he  complained,  it  is  not  the  ideality 
but  just  this  reality  of  God  that  men  are  ques- 
tioning in  these  days.  A  while  ago  open-minded 
men  were  saying  "  God  is  too  bad  to  be  true  " ; 
now  they  are  beginning  to  feel  that  God  is  too 
good  to  be  true ! 

Felix  Adler's  difficulty,  as  I  understood  him, 
is  typical;  and  I  am  frank  to  say,  it  is  insuper- 
able in  the  mind  which  follows  in  all  matters  the 
method  of  brute  fact.  "  What "  modern  men 
are  fond  of  asking  "  is  reality  in  fact?  "  "  Ob- 
serve and  then  report  what  you  see ! "  they  say. 


30      KELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

"  Do  the  heavens  in  fact  declare  the  glory  of 
God?  Are  things,  as  seen,  base  or  ideal?  Does 
the  account  of  reality,  as  it  appears,  suggest 
eternal  perfection  or  blind  force  as  its  core  and 
source?  " 

This  method  has  always  made  short  work  of 
the  affairs  of  religion.  Is  God  obviously  real? 
does  he  appear  upon  the  surfaces  of  things? 
Well,  no.  Do  the  facts  justify  the  soul  in  its 
eternal  hope?  No  again,  if  you  test  the  soul  as 
it  appears  in  some  diseased  state,  say,  in  idiocy  or 
senility;  or  if  you  judge  by  the  almost  tangible 
silence  of  the  grave.  Is  the  Power  of  things  as 
they  are  also  a  God  of  things  as  they  ought  to 
be?  No;  positive  pain  and  ill  has  always  op- 
posed its  spectral  being  in  the  way  of  every  fancy 
"  solution  "  of  this  problem  of  evil.  And  so  on 
through  a  very  dreary  series  of  hard-headed  and 
hard-hearted  negations. 

For  many  years  the  situation  was  no  better 
than  this.  On  the  one  side  there  was  the  idealist 
displaying  his  tiresome,  impractical  wares  in  the 
light  of  the  eternal;  by  arguments  ad  horrdnem 
persuading  men  to  faith  in  an  ideal  state  of  things 
they  practically  knew  to  be  unreal.  On  the  other 
side  the  realist  confounding  the  mild-eyed  and 
simple-minded  idealist  across  the  way  with  a  coun- 
ter display  of  hideous  facts,  brute-forces,  mon- 
strosities, evils  on  all  sides.  Idiocy,  degeneracy, 
moral  imbecility,  the  wholesale  slaughter  of  in- 
nocents, born  and  yet  unborn,  and  a  thousand  hor- 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      31 

rifying  features  wherein  the  experiment  of  man- 
making  has  most  miserably  failed. 

This  opposition  of  temperament  between 
idealist  and  realist  is  familiar  enough.  Each  in 
his  own  way  is  a  dogmatist;  each  stubbornly  fol- 
lows the  method  of  fact.  The  one  dogmatizes 
about  the  surface  aspects,  the  other  about  the  al- 
leged "  absolute  "  aspects  of  being.  The  dogma 
of  the  absolute  idealist  is  that  at  its  core  the  world 
of  facts  is  ideal ;  the  dogma  of  the  realist  is  that 
there  is  no  core  of  being  at  all,  but  things  are 
just  what  they  seem.  To  the  one  life  is  deeply 
rational  and  good;  to  the  other  it  is  throughout 
irrational  and  bad. 

But  lately  a  new  method  has  interposed  be- 
tween these  arch-temperaments,  a  method  called 
"  pragmatism."  In  its  spirit  it  disagrees  with 
the  dogmatism  of  idealist  and  realist  alike.  It  is 
by  no  means  absolute  in  its  emphasis  of  ideal 
things ;  yet  it  faces  the  appearance  of  things  with 
the  presumption  that  to  act  as  if  things  were 
better  than  they  really  are  would  perhaps  bring 
about  a  better  actual  state  of  affairs.  In  so 
far  the  pragmatist,  as  I  see  him,  is  an  idealist: 
he  believes  beyond  the  facts.  Again,  though  he 
is  not  abject  in  his  vision  of  things  as  they  are, 
yet  he  sees  enough  of  horror  in  being  to  stiffen 
the  souls  of  men  and  startle  them  out  of  the  silly 
optimism  of  the  absolute  idealist.  In  so  far  he, 
as  I  see  him,  is  a  realist:  he  believes  within  the 
facts. 


82      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

In  all  this  the  new  method  is  in  truth  the  method 
of  life.  In  all  living  we  assume  things  to  be 
better,  or,  alas,  worse  *  than  they  may  actually, 
be;  and  somehow  in  the  nature  of  things  as  they 
are  the  inner  assumption  does  perceptibly  alter 
for  better  or  worse  the  bare  face  of  the  world. 
This  pragmatist  then  does  in  truth  ring  reality 
much  more  genuinely  than  either  the  realist  with 
his  clumsy  or  the  idealist  with  his  vague  pulls 
upon  the  sources  of  being.2 

Now  it  is  the  character  of  religion  to  pull  upon 
being,  to  draw  substance  out  of  the  hidden  and 
unreachable  abysses  of  being,  to  create  gods  after 
the  manner  of  man.  The  modern  mind  needs  to 
be  reminded  of  this  peculiar  property,  this 
creative  virtue  of  religious  enthusiasm.  Its  first 
step  (and  an  indispensable  step  too,  if  it  would 
profess  religion  of  any  sort,  even  a  modest  religion 
of  humanity  )  must  be  away  from  the  rugged  real- 
ism of  its  method  of  brute  fact  toward  a  franker 
and  fluenter  enthusiasm  for  the  imponderable  and 

iThe  whole  universe,  you  remember,  became  "a  Hum- 
bug to  those  Apes  who  thought  it  one!"  Just  re-read 
Book  III,  Chap.  Ill  of  Carlyle's  "Past  and  Present," 
and  see. 

2  Elsewhere  I  have  outlined  a  philosophy  called  "cos- 
mic humanism,"  which,  I  imagine,  will  in  some  wise  be 
the  technical  outcome  of  this  fresh  method.  If  there  be 
any  of  my  readers  in  whose  mind  this  little  volume  ap- 
pears rather  thin  and  frothy  in  its  enthusiasm  for  an  un- 
formed humanity,  an  invisible  God-Man,  I  may  perhaps 
refer  him  to  the  appendix  where  I  have  reprinted  two  of 
the  articles  in  question. 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      33 

immeasurable  facts  of  being.  Thus,  if  he  profess 
a  religion  of  humanity,  let  him  after  the  manner 
of  the  fanatic  declare  that  there  are  no  facts 
except  Man.  Let  him  grapple  with  being  and 
bend  all  its  energy  along  with  his  own  human 
powers  toward  this  thing  he  calls  "  Humanity  ". 
Whenever  he  looks  upon  the  stars  let  him  see 
"  Man "  imaged  there  in  the  depths  of  being. 
Whenever  he  visits  the  plague-spots  among  men 
let  him  divest  the  moral  imbecile  he  sees  there  of 
all  his  filthy  rags  and  display  underneath,  once 
more,  a  "  Man ".  All  this  will  profoundly 
change  the  face  of  the  heavens  and  of  the  earth. 
And  the  religion  of  humanity's  blood-sweating 
faith  will  not  have  been  vain.  For,  doubt  it  not ! 
there  is  a  region  of  being  —  what  the  philosophers 
call  the  Unknowable  —  where  the  facts  are  un- 
determined, where  your  poor  human  "  say  so  " 
counts  tremendously !  It  is  the  region  of  "  Man  " 
and  "  God  ",  the  habitation  of  the  "  God-Man  " 
of  the  modern  mind. 

When  the  modern  mind  has  adopted,  whole- 
heartedly and  whole-souledly,  this  method  of  life 
it  will  not  ask  "  Is  God"  but  "  Shall  he  be?" 
not  "  What  is  God?"  but  "What  do  we  want 
him  to  be  ?  "  not  "  What  are  the  probabilities  in 
his  case  ?  "  but  "  How  much  in  our  own  human 
case  are  we  willing  to  do,  how  much  to  risk  in  the 
interest  of  God's  possible  being?"  not  "What 
may  we  reasonably  expect  from  the  alleged  God 
of  the  ages,  if  he  be?"  but  "What  for  God's 


34     RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

sake  can  we  practically  contribute  to  his  enter- 
prises among  us  men,  granting  that  he  is  ?  " 

Well  then  what  does  the  modern  mind  want 
God  to  be?  What  are  a  man's  lasting  wants,  his 
eternal  needs?  That's  the  question.  Then,  dare 
to  convert  these  eternal  wants  into  resolute  pulls 
upon  being's  sources!  Enter  the  free  region  of 
the  Unknowable  and  stake  out  your  claims !  As- 
sert your  right  to  find  in  God  what  your  human 
life  most  profoundly  needs !  Stake  your  life  upon 
the  trustworthiness  of  the  eternal !  Hold  fast  to 
that!  Demand  what  you  need  of  that!  Believe 
in  that!  And,  as  God  lives,  that  will  come  true 
in  the  end !  This  is  the  method. 

VI 

As  I  move  among  men  searching  their  souls 
and  mine  for  some  one  thing  which  would  cover 
with  its  principles  and  privileges  all  the  multi- 
plex needs  of  our  human  lives  I  come  to  dwell 
more  and  more  on  men's  want  of  moral  compan- 
ionship in  their  lives.  A  present  companion  here 
on  earth,  a  moral  Presence,  this  is  what  men  want 
God  to  be.  This  is  what  he  shall  be  in  the  in- 
visible depths  of  being  where  things  are  not  what 
they  seem  but  what  they  ought  to  be.  Let  the 
surface  facts  of  the  world  appear  as  they  may, 
the  modern  mind  must  risk  its  all,  must  contribute 
its  last  drop  of  energy  in  promoting  this  great 
unknown  God,  this  silent  Companion  of  men,  this 
present  Friend  of  humanity. 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      35 

As  it  stands,  "  moral  companionship  "  like  any 
other  catch-phrase  is  a  somewhat  vague  formula. 
But  if  we  will  examine  in  detail  the  concrete 
values  of  such  a  belief,  I  think  we  shall  find  them 
meeting  point  by  point  all  the  deeper  wants  of 
the  modern  mind. 


vn 

For  one  thing,  God,  were  he  real  not  merely 
as  an  unconscious  power  round  about,  above  and 
within  us  but  as  a  conscious  energy  companioning 
men  in  their  moral  struggles,  would  fill  with 
superlative  joy  all  the  places  of  moral  solitude 
in  the  world. 

We  have  marked  the  moral  loneliness  of  the 
modern  man.  Lacking  all  sense  of  overbrooding 
companionship,  finding  in  the  Unknown  no  evi- 
dent moral  friendliness,  wanting  in  his  own  life 
all  eternal  perspective,  the  modern  man  still  la- 
bors heroically  for  a  humanity  yet  to  be.  He  is 
a  religionist  of  humanity,  the  most  exquisite  ex- 
ample, so  far,  of  all  nature's  finer  products.  In 
him  the  "  struggle  for  the  life  of  others  "  has 
come  to  full  fruition.  He  yields  his  energies 
completely  to  the  life  of  the  whole  he  calls  "  hu- 
manity ".  All  his  wants,  all  his  needs,  center  in 
a  future  Man.  For  him  he  labors,  though  in  the 
joy  and  perfection  of  that  ideal  Man-to-be  he 
shall  have  no  conscious  part.  This  is  his  re- 
ligion; the  service  of  Man  its  only,  holy  office; 
his  God  is,  shall  be  this  Man-to-be. 


86      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

It  is  not  with  the  sects  and  religions  of  the 
past  but  with  this  religion  of  humanity  that  the 
modern  mind  has  got  to  reckon.  In  point  of 
nobility  and  in  its  acual  outlook  this  religion  of 
humanity  is  in  a  thousand  ways  suited  to  the 
wants  of  the  open-minded  man:  it  is  scientific, 
sincere,  clear-headed  and  above  all  humane.  It  is, 
moreover,  productive:  it  develops  on  earth  the 
highest  imaginable  type  of  moral  manhood. 
These  religionists  of  humanity  (I  make  no  ex- 
ception) are  the  best  men  on  earth  to-day,  the 
most  heroic  yet  the  freest  from  mock  heroics,  the 
purest  yet  the  least  pharisaic,  the  saddest  yet  the 
least  querulous  among  the  men  of  their  day  and 
generation. 

What,  somewhat  more  precisely  is  the  vision  of 
this  religionist  of  humanity?  It  is  a  vision  of 
the  human  life  as  a  continuous  generation  of 
moral  personalities  but  in  which  no  one  man  has 
any  personal  endurance.  The  man  of  to-day 
must  serve  the  man  of  to-morrow  by  indirect 
measures.  If  he  be  a  father,  he  must  aim  to 
produce  in  his  own  children  a  higher  and  stronger 
type  than  himself.  If  he  be  childless  he  may  yet 
serve  humanity  though  in  a  subtler  and  less  direct 
way:  he  may  seek  to  join  the  "  choir  invisible" 
of  those  whose  deeds  of  goodness  continue  even 
after  their  own  death  to  broaden  and  deepen  the 
continuing  stream  of  living,  human  souls.  His 
ideal  is  indeed  mystical:  he  has  and  holds  this 
vision  of  a  future  perfected  and  joyful  Son  of 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      37 

Man.  Only  it  is  a  sad  vision,  a  lonely  heroism! 
The  religionist  of  humanity  by  all  means  pro- 
motes a  great  enterprise  of  Man-making  in  the 
world,  but  is  yet  in  himself  sad  and  lonely.  He 
sees  men  of  incomparable  goodness  dying  on  all 
sides  with  no  great  Companion  to  close  their  eyes 
in  peace  and  with  no  power  on  earth  to  make 
good  the  dead  loss  of  their  kindly  and  beneficent 
souls.  The  way  is  weary  and  the  prospect  prom- 
ises nothing  to  him  and  his  fellows  of  the  on- 
ward life.  Yet  he  does  not  complain  and  whine 
and  whimper.  With  quiet  and  very  solemn  dig- 
nity this  merciful  religionist  of  humanity  will  tell 
you  that  the  ultimate  Man  of  his  mystic  vision  is 
worth  the  myriads  of  human  souls  sacrificed  in  his 
making. 

Yes,  that  Man  is  worth  all  the  soul-stuff  that 
is  going  into  his  beatific  being.  Any  one  of  us, 
if  he  too  be  a  nobleman  of  this  larger  Life  of 
humanity,  would  gladly  add  his  mite  of  being  to 
the  God-Man  who  is  yet  to  be  on  this  earth. 
What  assurance,  then,  have  we  that  this  ideal 
Man  will  some  day  come  to  be  in  very  truth? 
By  what  right  indeed  save  that  of  believing  and 
demanding,  of  staking  our  lives  fanatically  upon 
this  Son  of  Man!  The  religionist  of  humanity 
says  "  This  Man-to-be  shall  be.  It  matters  not 
how  the  facts  of  brute-being  may  seem,  this 
superlative  Man  shall  come  to  be,  shall  triumph 
over  the  grave  abysses  of  being,  shall  come  out 
of  the  Unknowable  onto  the  ground  of  an  eternal 


88      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

reality,  shall  prevail  and  preside  over  all  the 
powers  of  the  world,  informing  all  things  and  all 
men  with  his  own  noble  impulses  and  passions  of 
Manhood." 

Now  this  is  in  its  effect  just  what  I  mean  by  the 
God  of  the  modern  mind:  a  power  of  humanity 
that  shall  triumph  in  the  ends  of  life;  a  humane 
Life  that  is  becoming  ever  more  conscious  of  its 
inner  energies  and  purposes,  a  world-energy  that 
is  now  taking  hold  with  men  and  companioning 
them  along  their  ways  of  life.  In  their  effects, 
I  say,  these  two  views  are  practically  identical. 
A  man  who  believed  in  either  would  be  a  good 
neighbor,  companion  and  citizen.  He  would 
spend  his  whole  being  toward  an  ideal  humanity. 

What  then  is  the  precise  difference  between 
these  views  ?  Why  not  urge  a  "  religion  of  hu- 
manity "  as  suited  to  the  needs  of  the  whole,  mod- 
ern mind? 

The  difference  is  not  easy  to  express  precisely, 
though  as  it  feels  in  my  mind  it  is  not  inconsider- 
able. Between  the  humanitarian  religion  and 
that  I  am  urging  in  this  little  volume,  be  it 
understood,  there  is  no  least  clashing  of  ideals. 
They  differ  rather  in  the  intensity  of  their  faith. 
The  Man-God  is  ideal  with  both.  But  in  the 
one  case  this  ideal  is  going  to  be  real  in  some  re- 
mote age  and  clime;  in  the  other  it  is  real  here 
and  now.  The  Man-ideal  which  the  humanitarian 
hopes  to  have  realized  some  day  my  modern  man 
of  ideal  yet  practical  religion  feels  to  be  already 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND     39 

invisibly  and  mystically  real.  What  the  human- 
itarian hopes  man  will  become  his  brother  of  in- 
tenser  faith  says  God  now  is.  The  companion- 
ship which  the  one  has  only  in  imagination  with 
a  man  of  a  remote  future  the  other  by  faith  has 
already  with  a  Man  of  the  present.  The  one 
hopes  to  claim  and  control  the  energies  of  the 
world  to  serve  the  needs  of  this  future  Man ;  the 
other  somehow  feels  the  vast  energies  of  being  as 
already  charged  with  human  freight,  as  already 
companioning  and  working  with  the  present  man. 
The  humanitarian  says  "  I  am  a  man  and  nothing 
human  is  foreign  to  me  " ;  his  brother  of  a  larger 
faith  dares  to  affirm  that  God  is  a  Man  and  noth- 
ing human  is  foreign  to  him. 

How  to  justify  the  larger,  intenser  faith? 
This  is  perhaps  the  gravest  problem  we  shall 
need  to  face  in  our  treatment  of  the  case  of  re- 
ligion in  its  relation  to  the  modern  mind.  For 
I  make  no  doubt  that  the  modern  man  is  realistic 
rather  than  idealistic  in  his  apparent  tendencies 
and  motives.  As  we  saw  a  while  ago,  so  much 
of  mummery  and  dogmatism  has  been  foisted 
upon  him  under  the  guise  of  a  religious  idealism 
that  the  modern  man  has  become  thoroughly  sus- 
picious of  the  whole  method  and  business  of  re- 
ligion. There  is  even  a  certain  rudeness  in  the 
joy  with  which  he  has  broken  away  from  these 
older  fetters,  a  certain  unnecessary  heroism  in  his 
espousal  of  the  individual  man  as  godless  and 
mortal  in  the  world. 


40      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

Unnecessary,  because  he  himself  in  his  way  is 
just  as  much  an  idealist  as  the  man  sunken  in 
"  dogmatic  slumber  ".  His  future  Man  is  ideal. 
In  working  for  the  Man-to-be  the  humanitarian, 
just  like  any  other  idealist,  is  believing  beyond 
the  facts.  And  now,  a  little  more  of  this  "  be- 
lieving beyond  the  facts  "  and  he  will  have  a  God 
fitted  to  the  modern  mind  —  a  moral  conscious- 
ness growing  in  the  lives  of  men ;  a  human  Friend 
already  come  to  be  and  now  adding  all  his  uni- 
versal powers  and  practical  wisdom  to  the  ends 
of  men,  himself  a  real  Man,  the  realization  in 
substance  of  the  ideal  Man  of  a  humanitarian 
religion. 

The  first  great  want  of  the  modern  man  would 
thus  be  realized  by  a  simple  application  and  in- 
tensification of  his  natural  humanitarian  instincts 
and  passions.  In  the  place  then  of  his  present 
loneliness  would  appear  a  mystic  Companion, 
adding  to  man's  poor  powers  something  of  a 
God's  immense  energies,  to  man's  laboring,  sen- 
suous intelligence  something  of  divine  insight,  to 
man's  being,  ever  tottering  on  the  verge  of  the 
grave,  something  of  a  God's  confidence  in  the 
reality  of  things  unseen  yet  hoped  for,  some- 
thing of  divine  determination  to  draw  from  the 
unknown  sources  of  being  all  that  a  human  soul 
most  deeply  needs.  All  these  divine  joys  are 
gifts  to  men  out  of  the  heart  of  the  great  moral 
Companion  I  call  God. 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      41 

vni 

A  vast  deal  is  implied  then  in  this  conviction 
of  God  as  a  moral  Companion.  The  modern 
man,  as  I  see  him,  is  full  of  a  deep  moral  en- 
thusiasm. He  is  overflowing  with  philanthropic 
impulses,  rich  in  humanitarian  ideals,  conscious 
of  a  great  humane  Man-energy  stirring  in  his 
invisible  depths,  amazed  and  disgusted  with  any 
creature  in  human  form  who  sells  this  deeper  soul 
of  his  humanity  for  that  which  is  shallow  and 
base  and  mean. 

A  goodly  wave  of  this  moral  enthusiasm  swept 
over  the  country  a  few  years  ago  and  left  its 
high  mark  in  several  of  our  larger  cities.  With 
what  splendid  indignation  did  the  reformers  as- 
sault the  strongholds  of  vice  in  these  municipal- 
ities, exposing  graft,  prosecuting  the  lawless, 
cleansing  the  halls  wherein  the  people's  rights  and 
liberties  should  be  held  sacred !  It  was  not  child's 
play  either.  Men's  lives  were  in  danger.  Many 
were  threatened,  several  desperately  wounded,  and 
at  least  one  of  this  resolute  company  of  moral 
enthusiasts,  a  man  down  in  Texas,  lost  his  life 
in  the  endeavor  to  bring  his  fellows  to  their 
moral  senses.  It  was  all  fine,  dangerous,  heroic! 
A  man's  blood  still  tingles  with  the  fervor  of  the 
onslaught.  It  was  a  sublime  event  in  American 
history,  nothing  less.  In  this  I  would  want  to 
be  counted  wholly  and  unreservedly  on  the  side 
of  these  moral  "  cranks  ",  as  they  were  not  in- 


48      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

frequently  styled.  Who  indeed  would  not  gladly 
lose  his  good  right  arm,  his  own  life,  even  his 
reputation  for  "  practical  common  sense "  and 
"  worldly  j  udgment  "  forsooth !  rather  than  remit 
one  jot  or  tittle  of  those  finer  and,  if  you  please, 
impractical  things  which  deepen  and  dignify  the 
powers  of  manhood  in  the  world! 

I  will  not  be  misunderstood  then,  if  I  say  that 
there  was  in  this  great  wave  of  moral  enthusiasm 
a  certain  vagueness  and  vacuity.  Day  before 
yesterday  I  talked  with  one  of  these  moral  en- 
thusiasts, a  friend  of  many  years  standing. 
Three  of  the  men  he  convicted  of  fraud  in  high 
places  are  now  in  the  State's  penitentiary.  Again 
and  again  his  life  was  in  jeopardy  during  the 
heat  of  his  campaign  for  decency  and  righteous- 
ness. I  asked  my  friend  what  was  the  ground 
of  his  moral  enthusiasm.  What  was  his  religion? 
He  replied  that  many  years  ago  he  had  given  up 
thinking  on  such  matters.  In  the  years  of  his 
young  manhood  he  sought  out  the  church  which 
made  the  least  possible  creedal  demands  upon 
him  ("  asked  the  fewest  questions,"  as  he  put  it), 
joined  that  church,  and  since  then  has  shut  all 
such  matters  out  of  his  mind!  It  would  seem 
that  in  his  extraordinary  and  persistent  fight  for 
decency  and  purity  in  civic  affairs  he  has  drawn 
wholly  upon  his  own  resources  with  no  sense  of 
moral  companionship.  His  is  a  moral  not  a 
divine  enthusiasm. 

My  friend  is  still  continuing  the  battle.     At 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      43 

this  moment  he  is  laboring  night  and  day  to  ob- 
struct and  destroy  a  corrupt,  political  machine 
operating  in  his  city.  But  in  point  of  per- 
sistency and  efficiency  his  case,  one  must  feel,  is 
exceptional.  For  the  most  part  there  is  already 
a  remarkable  "  letting  up  ",  a  noticeable  relax- 
ing of  the  energy  with  which  only  a  few  years 
ago  this  mighty  project  of  municipal  moraliza- 
tion  was  launched.  The  explanation  of  this 
weakening  of  moral  energy  is  to  be  found,  I  think, 
in  the  vagueness  and  vacuity  of  the  modern 
mind's  moral  convictions.  Men's  moral  passion 
was  very  hot  but  it  didn't  burn  deep.  Men  had 
not  the  vision  of  the  things  they  did  as  concern- 
ing the  world's  well-being  to  its  very  core,  as 
furthering  a  larger  Life,  a  mystic  humanity,  a 
God-Man,  in  the  utmost  deeps  of  his  being.  They 
wrought  nobly  and  valiantly,  but  all  in  the  in- 
terest of  the  immediate  law  and  order.  That  ac- 
complished, the  vision  seems  to  have  disappeared. 
Soon  men  will  be  seen  returning  to  their  grafting 
places  and  the  entire  task  of  moral  regeneration 
will  need  to  be  gone  over  again.  This  at  all 
events  is  the  judgment  of  so-called  "  practical " 
men.  "  After  all,"  they  are  saying,  "  men  are 
very  much  alike  the  world  over.  You  may  raise 
the  level  of  human  decency  and  righteousness  to- 
day, but  to-morrow  will  find  men  on  yesterday's 
low  level  again.  It  is  at  best  a  tedious  thank- 
less, hopeless  business,  this  moral  Quixotism.  It 
requires  leader  after  leader.  One  great  moral 


44      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

genius  must  be  followed  by  another  only  a  few 
years  or  perhaps  generations  later  in  order  that 
men  may  be  saved  from  yielding  to  their  natural 
moral  inertia  and  drifting  back  once  more  into 
the  dark  and  dirty  ditches  of  their  common  be- 
ing." 

This  diagnosis  with  its  somewhat  gloomy  prog- 
nosis is  in  the  main  a  correct  estimate  of  the  moral 
weakness  of  our  modern  life.  But  the  remedy  for 
this  moral  anaemia  is  not  to  be  found,  I  insist,  in 
any  such  temporizing  tonics  as  are  generally  pre- 
scribed, each  generation  being  left  to  stimulate  its 
own  moral  energies,  and  so  on  age  after  age. 
All  this  is  too  vague  and  vacuous.  It  is  not 
visionary  enough,  not  tonic  enough.  "  Leader 
after  leader,  age  after  age "  you  say  ?  Well, 
suppose  we  allow  that  mankind  has  had  in  all 
times  and  places  of  its  history  a  solitary  and  faith- 
ful Leader,  a  very  God  among  men,  a  God-Man, 
no  less;  whose  courage  and  enthusiasm  run  un- 
brokenly  through  human  history;  whose  larger 
Life  is  the  source  of  all  moral  heroisms;  whose 
superabundant  energy  supplies  men  at  all  times 
and  in  all  places  of  right  endeavor;  whose  cur- 
rents of  being,  flowing  deeply  and  broadly  in 
the  way  of  righteousness,  catch  up  and  carry  for- 
ward every  drop  of  human  energy  spent  in  its 
same  direction  of  increasing  goodness?  In  this 
moral  Presence  men's  vague  and  vacuous  en- 
thusiasms would  take  on  the  fulness  and  clearness 
of  an  eternal  vision,  would  gain  the  dignity  of 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      45 

a  world-wide,  age-long  Life  of  becoming  good- 
ness. Generosity,  honesty,  kindliness,  lawfulness, 
all  these  now  somewhat  fancy  graces  of  human 
life  would  in  such  a  warming  Presence  push  their 
tender  roots  down  to  the  very  rock-bottom  of  the 
world's  being. 

This  is  what  the  modern  man  wants  God  to  be. 
This  is  what  any  man  gains,  practically  and  cer- 
tainly, who  risks  his  everlasting  life  upon  this 
belief  in  God  as  an  increasing  power  of  right- 
eousness, a  humane  Presence  ever  watchful  in  the 
regions  of  human  being,  a  moral  Companion 
among  men.  The  thing  he  yesterday  did  vaguely 
for  man's  sake  he  now  does  clearly  for  God's 
sake!  The  whole  prospect  of  future  things  be- 
comes transfigured  in  the  light  of  this  eternal 
Companion  of  men  in  their  ways  of  life. 

rx 

The  supremest  gift  of  this  man-wanted  God 
is  this  Companionship  with  his  humane  Life.  In 
the  deep  matters  of  morality,  for  example.  The 
modern  man,  I  was  just  saying,  is  vague  and 
vacuous  in  his  moral  enthusiasm.  This  because 
his  moral  endeavors  seem  to  him  lacking  in  any 
eternal  duration  or  value.  His  is  a  moral 
but  not  a  divine  enthusiasm.  It  is  morality  un- 
touched by  emotion  and  wanting  any  lasting  sanc- 
tion. In  all  this  we  may  observe  but  another 
symptom  of  the  modern  mind's  unconscious  revolt 
from  the  too  dogmatic  and  idealistic  beliefs  of  the 


46      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

past.  For  a  too  dogmatic  idealism  tends  always 
to  estrange  the  Ideal  from  the  Real.  In  the  view 
of  absolute  idealism  God  and  his  law  are  inwardly 
perfect.  As  transcendent  perfection  God  has  been 
in  eternity  what  man  has  got  to  become  in  time. 
In  all  this  God  is  severely  remote  from  the  human 
life,  his  judgments  are  necessary  and  automatic. 
He  is  in  the  strictest  sense  unmoral,  having  noth- 
ing in  common  with  our  processes  of  moral  strug- 
gle. As  one  of  my  students  recently  said,  "  Ask 
such  a  God  *  How  do  you  do '  and  he  will 
answer  *  I  don't  do,  /  am!  '  " 

In  the  view  of  the  modern  mind,  as  it  now 
stands  in  the  world,  there  exists,  whether  con- 
sciously or  not,  a  grievous  remoteness  of  its  idea 
of  God  from  its  idea  of  human  righteousness. 
God  is  immense,  superlative,  incomparable;  his 
glory  is  declared  in  the  heavens ;  he  is  of  old  and 
high  degree  in  eternity;  his  laws  are  hard  and 
fast;  he  is  a  great  energy  whose  deepest  char- 
acteristic is  a  "  taste  for  engineering  " :  in  their 
regular  courses  he  holds  the  stars  and  planets, 
with  only  here  and  there  a  comet  let  loose!  He 
works  in  men  also  by  the  same  steady,  uncon- 
cerned, mechanical  forces  he  expends  in  the 
spheres  above  their  heads.  He  is  all  this  and  all 
that,  anything  and  everything  save  human  and 
personal.  Between  him  and  us  there  is  no  point 
of  conscious,  friendly  contact.  We  are  all  impa- 
tience, eager,  strenuous,  struggling,  falling  and 
rising;  he  is  steady,  stolid,  determined,  austere. 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      47 

Our  life  at  its  best  is  expressed  in  the  simple  vir- 
tues of  the  hearth-stone;  his  best  manifested  in 
the  creaking,  complicated  motions  of  the  celestial 
spheres.  In  a  single  word  he  is  a  foreigner  on 
the  shores  of  our  human  life,  his  perfection  is 
alien  to  our  imperfection,  his  superhuman  cannot 
touch  our  human  lives. 

Now  I  think  the  world  has  had  enough  and  to 
spare  of  this  tiresome  emphasis  and  iteration  of 
God's  perfections  and  infinitudes.  That  God  is 
immense,  that  he  is  powerful  and  lawful,  that  his 
being  fills  all  space  and  informs  all  times  —  all 
these  heavy  claims  for  God  the  modern  mind  finds 
credible.  Of  course  God  is  all  that.  But  "  all 
that "  somehow  removes  him  from  the  precincts 
of  human  life.  I  am  told  by  a  former  colleague 
that  the  modern  Mohammedan  will  frequently 
curse  in  the  name  of  "  Allah  "  but  never  in  the 
name  of  one  of  the  Saints!  Allah  is  unearthly, 
superhuman,  remote.  The  saints  are  earthly, 
human,  present. 

Religion,  if  it  would  satisfy  the  genuine,  spir- 
itual hunger  of  the  modern  man,  must  dwell  more 
and  more  upon  those  parts  of  God's  being  where- 
in his  character  is  not  thus  unearthly  and  "  in- 
finite "  but  wherein  he  is  in  the  deepest,  intens- 
est  and  noblest  sense  human  and  "  finite  ".  Not 
the  being  of  God  —  of  course  that  is  infinite !  — 
but  the  character  of  God  it  is  that  concerns  men 
deeply  and  practically  in  these  latter  days. 
There  was  a  day,  we  may  suppose,  though  I  con- 


48      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

fess  I  doubt  it,  in  the  life  of  humanity  when  the 
human  character  depended  upon  this  ponderous 
belief  in  God's  absolute  and  invisible  perfection. 
But  now  at  any  rate  that  day  is  gone.  The  man 
of  to-day,  the  man  of  iron  constitution  and  yet 
broken  heart,  has  little  need  to  be  told  of  God's 
awful  perfection,  his  absolute  character.  He  has 
desperate  need  to  be  told  and  reassured  of  God's 
humaneness  of  being.  Once  more,  not  what  God 
transcendently  is  but  what  men  humanly  want  him 
to  be  is  the  supreme  test  of  that  divine  being,  that 
larger  Life  on  which  we  men  must  sooner  or  later 
stake  our  human  lives. 

What,  let  us  ask  then,  must  be  the  character  of 
the  larger  Life  in  those  times  and  places  of  its 
being  in  which  it  partakes  literally  of  the  human 
life?  when  it  shares  quiveringly  in  all  men's  labors 
and  pains,  sorrows  and  tragedies,  successes  and 
failures,  graces  and  sins?  In  this  the  larger 
Life  is  just  what  the  modern  man  wants  God  to 
be  —  the  mysterious  Companion  of  his  daily  life, 
the  invisible  realization  of  all  he  hopes  to  be,  the 
ideal  Man  of  his  future  humanity.  God  in  such 
a  view  retains  his  physical  infinitudes:  his  energy 
still  fills  all  space  and  time.  But  to  these  harsher 
infinitudes  the  modern  mind  wants  its  God  to  add 
the  tenderer  infinitudes  of  a  conscious  concern 
with  its  human  life :  infinite  patience,  hopefulness, 
sinlessness;  infinite  moral  action,  infinite  com- 
panionship in  all  things  human  —  this  is  what  we 
need  and  want  and  mean  by  God's  infinity !  This 


EELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      49 

is  what  God  must  and  will  and  shall  be !  At  this 
human  call  the  God  of  the  immensities  comes  down 
to  earth,  enters  friendlily,  companionably  into  the 
region  of  our  human  passions.  He  is  no  longer 
remote  and  unearthly.  Blaspheme  not!  God, 
as  he  lives  among  men,  is  in  strictest  truth  the 
present  Saint  of  human  life. 

In  these  human  parts  of  his  nature  God  com- 
panions men  even  in  ways  of  sin  and  evil.  Evil, 
as  God  lives,  is  not  "  good  in  the  making  ",  not 
just  a  partial  phase  of  an  eternal  perfection,  not 
something  wholly  unreal  in  the  view  of  an  absolute 
intelligence.  It  is  real  and  positive ;  of  such  hor- 
rible proportion  in  the  human  life  that  the  divine 
struggle  against  its  devastating  and  death-dealing 
breath  is  in  principle  and  in  fact  uncertain !  Ex- 
cept the  battle  be  real  to  men  and  Gods,  there  is  no 
glory  in  the  victory. 

The  humaner  religions,  the  religions  of  human- 
ity, have  always  solemnly  and  joyfully  maintained 
this  sense  of  divine  Companionship ;  they  have  be- 
lieved literally  that  for  God  as  for  men  sin  is 
horribly  positive;  they  have  found  consolation  in 
a  God  tempted  even  as  men  are ;  they  have  taught 
men  that  their  uncleanness  counts  against  God; 
that  the  coldness  of  their  death  in  sin  does  lower 
the  temperature  of  the  divine  life,  really  reduces 
God's  chances  of  victory  over  these  powers  of  evil 
in  the  making  of  humanity.  These  humane 
religions  have  taught  that  in  sadness  and  pain, 
in  joy  and  pity,  in  hope  and  love  —  in  all  these 


50      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

qualities  the  great  God,  just  like  a  man,  is  soft- 
ened and  humanized  in  his  life.  The  failure  of 
a  human  life  here  or  there  is  just  so  far  the  failure 
of  God.  The  complete  and  miserable  death  in 
sin  of  a  whole  humanity  would  be  the  complete 
and  miserable  death  of  God!  Beside  this  vast 
grave  of  a  dead  humanity  even  the  great  patient 
and  hopeful  soul  of  God  would  falter  and  die  — 
would  die  of  a  broken  heart !  Even  so  does  God 
live  and  move  and  have  his  being  in  the  spirits  of 
men. 

Companionship !  Fellowship  with  God !  That 
is  what  the  modern  man  wants  and  must  somehow 
secure  out  of  the  invisible  depths  of  God's  great 
unknown  being.  The  absolute  power  and  good- 
ness of  God,  the  inviolability  of  the  moral  law  — 
all  this  the  modern  man  has  horizon  enough  to 
take  for  granted.  What  he  wants  to  know  is 
whether  God  and  the  law  are  humanly  divine, 
divinely  human.  He  needs  to  know  that  God's 
goodness,  however  trustworthy,  is  yet  like  his  own 
an  achievement,  that  God's  love,  however  free, 
is  no  necessary  gift  of  an  unconscious  beneficence 
but  is  like  his  own  a  passionate  and  spontaneous 
impulse  out  of  an  inwardly  and  consciously  affec- 
tionate Soul  of  goodness. 

x 

Thus  we  may  return  at  last  to  the  practical 
level  on  which  our  discussion  began.  Religion 
and  the  modern  mind!  If  I  am  right  in  mj 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      51 

analysis  of  the  mystic  needs  of  the  modern  mind 
in  matters  religious,  then,  once  more,  we  may 
mark  the  inadequacy  of  the  customary  restora- 
tives of  religion.  The  man  who  desperately  needs 
God  as  a  moral  companion  is  not  likely  to  endure 
the  noise  and  clatter  of  the  sensational  preacher. 
He  is  not  likely  to  be  permanently  satisfied  with 
the  "  sociological "  discourses  of  the  practical 
preacher.  He  is  certain  to  reprehend  the  confu- 
sion of  his  mystic  experience  of  God  as  endlessly 
human  with  that  revelation  of  him  in  a  single  per- 
son or  race  or  sect  which  is  urged  as  "  final "  by 
the  apologetic  preacher. 

The  modern  man  needs  a  new  prophet  who  shall 
reveal  the  mystic  humanity  of  God;  a  prophet  of 
the  universal  human  life  and  righteousness  of 
God.  He  will  bring  close  to  man  a  God  whose 
humane  spirit  has  lived  and  grown  through  prac- 
tically infinite  time  and  over  practically  infinite 
space;  a  spirit  which  age  after  age  in  constant 
hopefulness  and  patience  has  guided  the  very 
stars  to  serve  the  spirits  of  men ;  a  God-Man  who 
through  the  ages  has  achieved  a  goodness,  has 
developed  a  hopefulness  which  can  never-more 
give  up  its  experiment  of  love  among  men,  so  long 
as  one,  solitary  soul  continues  to  live  in  right  af- 
fectionate relation  with  his  invisibly  human  Life; 
a  great  moral  Companion,  living  and  growing 
with  and  through  the  human  life;  an  infinitely 
human  God  with  all  of  a  Man's  mysterious  powers 
and  sympathies;  a  personal  Life  transcending 


52      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

every  possible  intuition  of  our  earth-bound  per- 
sonalities ;  a  God  whose  human  being  and  love  are 
planet-wide  and  race-wide,  yet  a  God  who  lives 
and  grows  here  and  now  under  all  the  conditions 
of  human  passion,  affection,  aspiration  and 
struggle,  only  with  incomparably  more  of  wisdom, 
patience,  hope  and  love.  This  is  the  God  of  the 
Ages,  the  God  we  need  and  want,  the  One  who 
shall  be,  upon  whom  a  strong  man  will  risk  all 
his  earthly  goods,  and  for  whom  a  righteous  man 
will  risk  his  everlasting  life.  This  is  the  religion 
of  the  modern  man,  conscious  of  his  deepest  needs 
and  powers :  a  confident  belief  in  the  final  purity, 
dignity  and  goodness,  the  actual  presence  of  all 
his  human  passions  in  a  living  God.  Man,  an 
infinite  god:  God,  an  infinite  Man.  This  is  the 
religion,  I  tell  you!  How  long,  O  Man-God, 
must  men  of  the  modern  mind  await  thy  prophet? 


n 

GOD  AND  THE  WORLD-HOME 

i 

Men's  reflections  upon  the  end  of  life,  their 
thoughts  of  human  destiny,  have  always  centered 
somehow  in  their  own  passions,  hopes,  desires; 
they  have  always  aimed,  and  that  right  passion- 
ately, at  the  thing  devised  for  them  by  the  action 
of  their  practical  reason,  their  humane  intelli- 
gence. Heaven  to  men  has  always  been  "  home," 
the  reflection  of  their  tenderest,  most  practical 
endeavors  after  peace,  power  and  harmony. 

I  set  it  down  as  a  natural  principle  then,  first, 
that  your  theory  of  life's  end  or  destiny  shall  be 
native  to  the  human  beings  it  is  designed  for, 
and,  second,  that  it  shall  be  attainable. 

n 

This  principle,  as  I  see  it,  at  once  excludes  from 
our  discussion  two  ponderous  theories  of  life's 
destiny.  The  one,  the  ideal  of  Hellenic  culture, 
is  canceled  on  the  ground  that  in  us  it  is  not 
native;  the  other,  the  conception  of  German 
idealism,  on  the  ground  that  it  is  not  attainable 
by  us  human  beings. 

The  typical  Greek  in  the  days  when  he  aimed 

at  anything  was  a  hunter  of  being.     To  him  just 

to  be,  just  to  stand  forth,  to  gather  to  himself 

more  and  more  being,  was  in  itself  a  sufficient 

53 


54      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

and  supreme  end  in  life.  The  perfect  athlete, 
the  perfect  poet,  the  perfect  philosopher,  even  the 
perfectly  jolly  or  cynical  man, —  all  these  were, 
each  in  his  proper  sphere,  "  good  and  beautiful " 
exhibits  of  being.  Just  being,  being  just,  good 
being,  being  good  —  to  the  Greek  mind  these 
were  in  fact  simply  convertible  terms.  What- 
ever is,  is  good ;  not  is  right,  for  that  implies  con- 
sideration, implies  a  doubt  overcome,  but  is  good 
—  inherently,  unconsciously,  inalienably  good. 

A  vast  deal  of  solemn  literature  has  been  pro- 
duced to  explain  this  native  optimism,  this  ex- 
uberant naturalism,  of  the  Greek  mind.  Some 
credit  it  to  climate,  others  to  peninsular  isola- 
tion, others  again  to  this  or  that  accident  of  hu- 
man history.  In  any  case  the  fact  is  clear  and 
indubitable:  the  Greek  optimism  was  native  and 
natural,  a  matter  of  temperament.  The  cheerful 
cynic  and  friendly  solipsist,  each  sublimely  un- 
conscious of  the  inward  contradictoriness  of  his 
position,  are  typical  Greeks.  To  us  with  our 
diabolical  taste  for  consistency  they  are  a  source 
of  perennial  amazement;  but  then  optimism, 
cheerful  cynicism,  friendly  solipsism  and  all  that 
are  not  native  in  us.  In  the  eyes  of  the  Greek, 
contrariwise,  whatever  of  inconsistency,  ugliness, 
or  evil  may  for  the  moment  have  risen  to  the  sur- 
face of  his  naturally  rippling  life  speedily  sank 
of  its  own  dead  weight  to  the  pit-bottom  of  being 
and  was  smothered  there,  a  "  hardly  real "  as 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD-HOME         55 

Plato  puts  it,  a  practical  non-entity.  The 
Greek  synonym  for  evil,  you  remember,  was  *v%/, 
dead  wood!  Water-logged,  heavy,  ponderously 
inconsiderable. 

Some  of  the  "  fathers  "  of  the  Christian  church 
made  a  desperate  shift  to  consecrate  this  Greek 
notion  of  life's  end.  They  said :  "  God  is  es- 
sentially ens  re<^lssvmwm,  ens  perfectissimum;  he 
is  absolute  being  and  your  own  destiny  and  eter- 
nal joy  must  consist  in  contemplation  of,  and 
participation  in,  his  eternal  perfection." 

But  live  Christians  have  always  been  frankly 
negligent  of  this  hybrid  conception  of  God  and 
human  destiny ;  they  have  always  practically  re- 
pudiated this  end  of  life.  They  have  preferred 
the  more  distinctly  Christian  idea  of  a  specific 
and  concrete  heaven  as  their  destination.  It  was 
sometimes  a  pretty  ghastly  heaven,  I  grant,  but 
concrete  and  teeming  with  active  life  nevertheless. 
Christian  culture  has  tended  always  to  aim  at  a 
destiny  in  some  wise  human,  social,  home-like  in 
its  deeper  parts. 

Whether  for  better  or  worse  the  Hellenic  tem- 
perament with  its  naturalism  and  optimism  is  no 
longer  native;  it  does  and  can  no  longer  work  on 
this  human  plane.  Even  those  will  admit  the 
fact  who  most  deeply  deplore  it.  Nietzsche,  for 
example,  does  most  scathingly  rebuke  the  Chris- 
tian for  prostituting  his  strong  western  nativity 
before  an  effeminate  oriental  form  of  culture. 


56      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

But  in  all  this  he  does  most  volubly  admit  the 
fact  that  we  are  no  longer  Greeks;  we  no  more 
aim  naturally  at  being.  Our  sole  aim  is  not  to 
get  fatness  whether  in  point  of  flesh  or  in  point 
of  spirit.  Our  ideal,  I  repeat,  is  social,  humane, 
philanthropic,  sympathetic,  communistic.  If  we 
theorize  at  all  independently  we  conceive  being 
not  as  naturally  good,  but  as  becomingly  so;  not 
as  perfectly  wholesome,  all  evil  being  so  much 
dead  wood,  but  as  painfully  divided,  evil  being  so 
much  live  passion  to  be  mastered  and  downed  by 
the  cooler  passion  of  sympathetic  and  socialistic 
aims. 

I  would  there  were  time  to  compare  these  two 
ideals  of  human  destiny ;  to  compare  them  odi- 
ously; to  affirm  my  entire  and  unreserved  sub- 
scription to  the  humaner  culture  of  the  non-Hel- 
lenic Europeans.  Such  declaration  of  faith  in 
the  altruistic  impulses  and  passions  of  the  mod- 
ern mind  might  do  some  good  in  these  days  when 
so  much  is  being  written  in  celebration  of  Greek 
ideals.  But  I  must  content  myself  with  the  sim- 
ple fact  that  these  Hellenic  ideals  are  no  longer 
native;  we  simply  cannot  —  at  least  not  natu- 
rally —  aim  at  being.  Most  men  of  the  modern 
mind  would  appear  as  ludicrous  clowns  if  clothed 
in  the  ill-fitting  modes  of  the  Greeks.1 

i  Perhaps  Marathon  races  are  in  point.  I  imagine  the 
shores  of  Elysium  are  lined  with  athletic  shades  who  wit- 
ness with  heavenly  laughter  our  modern  performances  of 
that  once  great  and  natural  event. 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD-HOME         57 

m 

And  I  find  I  have  an  equal  quarrel  with  the 
ideal  of  German  romanticism  usually  taught  in 
the  schools  as  strictly  suited  to  our  modern  minds ; 
the  ideal,  namely,  of  God  as  a  perfect  self .  "  Ab- 
solute being  is  God  in  truth,"  these  modern  school- 
men assure  us,  "  perhaps  not  a  natural  but  a 
supernatural  being,  perhaps  not  good  here  and 
now  but  good  in  eternity;  a  Life,  a  Self,  a  Per- 
son, an  eternal,  continuous,  smooth,  perfect  be- 
ing, is  God."  You  see,  unlike  the  Greek  God, 
whose  being  was  of  course  infinite  and  naturally 
good,  this  modern  God  owns  an  infinity  and  a 
perfection  most  scrupulously  thought  out,  and 
most  laboriously  fitted  into  the  structure  of  our 
modern  dubious  life. 

Now  if  one  were  obliged  to  choose  between 
these  two  conceptions :  natural,  instinctive,  opti- 
mistic perfectness  of  being  on  the  one  hand,  and 
romantic,  self-conscious,  thoroughly-cooked  and 
digested,  in  short  philosophic  perfection  on  the 
other,  I  should  not  wonder  at  the  man  who  fa- 
vored the  natural  unconscious  belief  in  being's 
essential  goodness.  But  nothing  can  persuade 
me  that  this  necessity  of  choice  is  upon  us.  The 
point,  as  I  see  it,  is  that  we  of  the  modern  mind 
have  seen  imperfection  so  real  and  present,  have 
been  so  infernally  near  to,  if  not  actually  in,  hell 
that  we  are  henceforth  barred  from  any  choice 
between  this  or  that  kind  of  perfection.  Hence- 


68     RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

forth  the  vital  consideration  is  not  whether  God 
is  perfect  in  this  way  or  in  that ;  whether  his  per- 
fection is  natural  and  unconscious  or  rather  con- 
scious and  full  of  eternally  fitting  purposes. 
The  important  thing  is  to  make  out  whether  God 
is  perfect  at  all  or  not;  to  consider  whether  per- 
fection applies  in  any  considerable  sense  to  our 
human  life;  to  determine  whether  this  perfection 
in  God's  case  is  by  any  means  whatsoever  attain- 
able in  our  human  affairs. 

Now  the  express  aim  of  the  following  pages  is 
to  consider  "  God  "  as  a  human  relation,  to  in- 
vestigate our  human  ideals,  even  the  homeliest  of 
them,  in  the  light  of  a  possible  larger  Life  and 
deeper  Sympathy.  That  this  one  point  of  our 
divine  relation  may  stand  out  clearly  I  must  set 
down  a  few  radical  principles.  Thus: 

A  God  of  eternal  perfection  of  any  sort  you 
will  has  nothing  to  do  with  any  problem  what- 
soever, least  of  all  with  any  humanity's  problem 
involving,  as  it  must,  a  horde  of  imperfect  im- 
moral beings  as  its  irreducible  data.  There  is  no 
such  thing  as  moral  perfection  in  God's  universe 
—  if  it  be  God's  indeed !  Moral  perfection ! 
listen  to  that  phrase  inwardly  for  a  moment. 
Can't  you  hear  something  split?  Doesn't  the 
"  moral "  somehow  crash  away  from  the  "  per- 
fection "  in  this  beautiful  structure  of  your 
dreams?  Morality  carries  about  it  the  sweat  of 
the  workingman,  the  stench  of  his  will.  Or,  if 
you  prefer  poet  Swinburne's  way  of  putting  the 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD-HOME         59 

case,  "  the  perfume  of  manhood  "  issues  from  a 
being  of  such  moral  power.  But  does  your  in 
any  wise  perfect  God  sweat  and  smell  of  man- 
hood? Rather  not. 

It  needs  to  sprinkle  a  little  common  sense  into 
our  discussion  at  this  point;  to  lay  the  dust 
which  some  absolute  idealist  always  throws  in  the 
air  whenever  you  require  to  see  clearly  the  eternal 
perfection  set  forth  in  his  mammoth  account  of 
God.  I  confess  that  after  many  years  of  scrupu- 
lous consideration  I  am  as  much  as  ever  in  the 
dark ;  I,  stupid  that  I  am,  simply  cannot  see  clearly 
how  a  thing,  though  it  were  a  God,  can  be  both 
itself  and  its  opposite  in  any  sense  or  in  any  de- 
gree whatsoever.  Absolute  idealism  and  common 
sense  do  leave  me  always  with  a  perfect  mess  of 
irreducible  contradictions  stewing  in  my  hot 
brain.  Such  as  these,  for  example : 

God  is  perfect ;  we  imperfect.  God  whole ;  we 
partial.  God  an  individual  of  eternal  inward 
harmony;  we  a  society  of  maladjusted  laborers 
after  health,  comfort,  harmony.  God  is  indis- 
putably One,  of  one  mind  and  will ;  we  raucously 
many,  of  many  minds  and  wills.  God  is  fully 
and  healthily  That;  we  hopelessly  and  incurably 
This.  Idealism  and  common  sense  could  not  eas- 
ily concoct  two  more  alien  beings  than  God  and 
we! 

And  now  the  silly  controversy  is  on!  From 
the  study  of  the  idealist  there  bursts  forth  a 
perfect  cloud  of  dry  dust.  In  the  consequent 


60      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

confusion  the  voice  of  his  idealism  speaks  these 
doubtfully  consolatory  and  mystifying  words: 
"  We  are  *  implicitly  '  all  that  God  is  *  explicitly.' 
God  is  we  '  in  so  far '  as  we  are  God.  God  is 
perfect  in  absolute  degree,  we  in  the  degree  in 
which  we  are  .  .  .  God  is  *  in  eternity ' 
what  we  are  *  in  time.'  God  is  good,  eternally 
made-good,  we  are  *  good  in  the  making.'  God 
is  inwardly  merely  what  we  outwardly  seek  to 
become.  God  is  the  fulfilment,  we  the  process. 
God  solves  *  instantly '  and  painlessly  all  the 
problems  we  tackle  in  the  painful  experiments  of 
our  waking  hours."  And  so  on  ad  nauseam. 

Let  him  understand  such  language  who  can! 
As  for  me  I  am  right  sick  of  it  all;  the  dryness 
and  unreality  of  it  all,  they  suffocate  me.  It 
all  comes  to  this.  Either:  you  and  I  are  not 
really  finite  but  infinite ;  not  really  in  time  but  in 
eternity;  not  really  imperfect  but  perfect;  not 
really  in  a  state  of  social  unrest  and  evil  to  be 
overcome  manfully  with  splendid  pathos  of  one 
soul  with  another,  perhaps  of  one  human  soul 
with  another  Human  Soul;  but  rather  in  a 
solemn  and  solitary  state  of  eternal  harmony 
wherein  any  straining  of  our  human  persons 
would  be  ill-advised  and  in  bad  taste.  Either 
this,  I  say,  or  else:  God,  the  self  of  selves,  the 
soul  of  souls,  is  not  really  infinite  but  finite,  not 
really  eternal  and  fulfilled  but  temporal  and  in 
process,  not  really  perfect  but  imperfect,  not 
really  beyond  us  in  any  eternal  way  but  most 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD-HOME         61 

literally  and  strictly  with  us  in  our  human  ways. 
I  can  neither  see  nor  understand  any  other 
alternative.  And  the  facts  as  common  sense 
is  apt  to  see  them  oblige  one  to  adopt  the 
latter  view  of  God  rather  than  the  former  view 
of  man. 

IV 

"  If  then  the  Greek  ideal  of  our  human  destiny 
is  not  native  and  the  ideal  of  German  romanticism 
it  not  attainable  shall  we  then  accept  the  crass 
philosophy  of  the  modern  *  humanist '  so- 
called?"  someone  will  ask.  By  all  manner  of 
means,  yes !  But,  first,  let  us  word  that  humanist 
philosophy  a  little  more  particularly. 

It  would  discover  in  the  human  the  essence  and 
aroma  of  the  divine.  The  difference  between 
your  you  and  your  God  is  in  the  main  a  gross 
quantitative  matter.  The  larger  Life  is  larger 
than  you  in  very  obvious  fact  but  not  diviner. 
The  great  God  himself  in  all  his  powers  and 
privileges  is  not  more  righteous  nor  more  loving, 
no  diviner,  than  you  would  most  instinctively 
be,  had  you  those  same  great  energies  and  op- 
portunities. You  are  infinite,  most  literally  and 
prosaically  infinite, —  you!  You,  veriest  beast 
of  the  earth!  in  those  qualities  wherein  you  do 
touch  the  living  powers  and  the  divine  graces 
of  the  world's  soul  you  are  infinite,  I  say !  You 
are  God's  maximum  as  God  is  your  maximum. 
What  becomes  you  becomes  God.  Where  you  are 


62      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

there  he  is!  What  you  are  that  he  is!  When 
you  are  then  he  is !  Your  purposes,  your  prob- 
lems, your  questions  are  most  actually  his.  He 
does  not  fulfill  nor  solve  nor  answer  them  one 
whit  more  instantly  than  you.  Your  solutions 
are  and  must  be  his.  You  and  he  together,  most 
intimately  and  mutually  together,  become  That  I 
have  called  "  Man-God." 

"  What  is  man  that  God  is  mindful  of  him?  " 
you  ask.  "  What  is  God  that  thou  art  mindful 
of  him,?  "  I  retort.  Do  you  dare  to  debase  man? 
Then  I  dare  to  debase  God.  Nay,  you  have  de- 
based him;  for  God  is  most  literally  that  very 
Man  whom  you  in  your  lust  for  material  infini- 
tude have  trampled  in  the  dust.  Until  you  are 
able  and  strong-souled  enough  to  go  with  me 
into  the  filthy  plague  spots  of  men  and  see  God 
there,  most  palpably  degraded  and  besmirched 
there!  I  want  none  of  your  immaculate  infini- 
tudes drawn,  though  never  so  knowingly,  from 
the  vaults  of  heaven;  I  will  have  none  of  your 
frightful  infinitudes  wrought  in  the  sullen  abysses 
of  the  world's  ground!  I  find  such  a  theologic, 
macrocephalic  God  parenoeic, —  unnaturally,  in- 
humanly, morbidly,  perfect ; —  la  grandeur!  Vulu- 
sion!  grand  Dieu! 

We  need  to  lay  this  matter  close  to  heart.  Let 
me  for  one  be  simple  and  straight  at  this  critical 
point:  I  haven't  the  faintest  notion  what  use 
future  generations  may  make  of  such  once  sacred 
terms  as  "infinite,"  "perfect"  and  the  like;  I 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD-HOME         63 

imagine  they  will  one  day  be  revived  and  made  to 
serve  once  more  a  divine  function  in  the  lan- 
guage and  living  thoughts  of  men.  But  just 
now  I  find  them  pretty  well  worked  out.  Take  a 
plain,  modern  man  and  insist  upon  it  that  God  is 
perfect,  infinite  and  all  that ;  he  will  say :  "  Cer- 
tainly, of  course,  sure  thing!  But  what  of  it? 
Does  that  not  simply  shift  onto  the  shoulders  of 
men,  onto  them  exclusively,  the  considerable  task 
of  overcoming  the  world's  very  ponderable  im- 
perfection and  finitudes?  Is  not  God,  in  such  a 
case  of  perfection  and  infinitude,  m-cased,  shut 
off,  removed,  inconsiderable,  in-himself  ?  "  We 
need  to  lay  this  matter  to  heart. 

And  the  best  way  I  know  of  laying  this  mat- 
ter to  heart  would  be  to  try,  seriously,  earnestly, 
devationally  to  try,  the  alternative  experience  of 
God ;  the  experience  of  him,  namely,  as  finite,  im- 
perfect, becoming  divine,  strictly  social,  sympa- 
thetic, human  in  all  his  greater  Energy  and  Life. 

There  is,  one  must  admit,  a  subtle  and  charm- 
ing perfume  of  infinitude  pervading  the  per- 
fect being  of  God  as  conceived  by  men  of  the 
past;  to  one  of  mystic  temperament  a  perfect 
God  is  as  a  very  breath  of  his  nostrils;  he  lives 
and,  alas,  dies  by  him ;  it  is  a  luxury,  this  belief  in 
God's  infinity  and  perfection,  not  lightly  to  be 
given  up.  He  is  so  dependable,  so  luxurious,  so 
ennervatmg,  this  God  of  the  ages,  this  God  of 
aged  perfection.  There  is  no  denying  that  he  is 
the  God  of  a  superfine  aristocratic  form  of  human 


64      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

culture.  He  is  a  God  of  no  social  problems  or 
social  instincts;  invariably  he  has  been  the  idol 
of  things  as  they  are,  the  God  of  the  existing 
order,  the  God  of  those  who  prey  upon  their 
weaker  fellows.  I  except  the  mystics,  you  see; 
but  the  rest  of  mankind  have  invariably  used  the 
eternally  perfect  and  infinite  God  as  an  instru- 
ment of  exploitation,  palliation,  delay,  delusion, 
enslavement  in  human  affairs.  Let  a  palpably 
imperfect  and  finite  creature  cry  out  against  his 
intolerable  fate  and  they  will  throw  him  the  sop 
of  a  remote  and  distant  perfection,  a  foreign 
shore,  where  in  God  he  too  will  eventually  find 
his  perfect  home  —  provided  he  complain  and 
curse  no  more !  "  Laissez-faire  " —  that's  the 
solution  of  human  affairs  invariably  offered  by 
a  perfect  God  and  his  subscribers.  We  need  to 
lay  this  matter  to  heart. 

Lay  it  to  heart  then!  Just  allow  yourself  to 
think  unafraid,  unashamed  and  plainly  that  God 
is  not  all  this;  that  he  does  not  tolerate  all  this 
exploitation,  palliation,  arictocratic  insolence; 
that  he  is  most  actively  and  sweatingly  human; 
that  his  spirit  is  right  poignantly  involved  in 
human  relations,  very  strictly  present  in  human 
being;  that  he  moves  in  human  destinies,  writhes 
in  all  our  human  bestialities,  ascends  in  all  our 
human  flights  of  justice  and  righteousness;  that 
his  spirit  watches  and  pushes  and  pulls  in  all  the 
efforts  of  our  human  race!  God  almighty,  what 
a  God!  God  all-human,  what  a  God!  Cry  out, 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD-HOME         65 

sing,  shout  for  joy!  Unto  us  a  God  is  born! 
born  of  human  labor!  a  Son  of  Man!  himself  a 
Man,  a  great  Man-God,  an  incomparable  God- 
Man,  a  God  with  sweating  soul! 

Do  you  ask  then  whether  God  is  simply  the 
spirit  of  humanity?  I  reply  that  God  is  es- 
sentially and  simply  just  that.  There  are  no 
considerable  facts  in  the  universe, —  in  God,  that 
is, —  save  men.  God  is  the  ideal  harmony  of 
these  human  selves.  As  such  he  is  —  why  not? 

—  a  spirit  of  humanity ;  a  group  spirit  of  the 
many  conscious  human  spirits  on  the  face  of  the 
world;  a  God-Man,  as  I  have  said.     Beyond  this 
is    the    Great-Beyond,   the   Vast    Unknown    into 
which  men  of  to-day  and  of  future  generations, 
even  as   passionately  faithful  men   of  the  past, 
will  project  a  God   of  their  own  inner  life;  a 
Man-God,  I  say.     In  this  the  humanist  simply 
demands  and  exercises  the  right  of  his  surpas- 
sing, superabundant  Manhood,  the  right  of  men 
who  have  gone  before,  the  right  of  passionate 
faith,  the  right  to  pull  from  out  the  everlasting 
white-hot  fires  of  being  all  that  his  soul  does  most 
genuinely  require,  the  right  to  create  God  in  his 
own  image,  the  will  to  believe  that  out  of  the  No- 
where, out  of  the  Great  Unknown  has  arisen,  and 
will  rise  evermore,  a  being  and  living  Great  Man, 

—  living  and  being  by  the  same  eternal  passions 
the  most  lowly  man  may  find  in  his  own  soul. 

The  off-hand  criticism  with  which  your  aristo- 
crat fronts  this  divine  faith  I  find, —  I  will  not 


66      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

say  refutable  but  detestable.  "  How  do  you 
know,"  he  asks,  "  how  do  you  humanists  know 
that  the  God  in  your  case  does  really  sur- 
pass a  fairly  civilized  man?  A  fine  old  Savage 
you  make  of  God,  forsooth !  " 

"  How  do  we  know?  "  Well,  to  be  plain  about 
it,  we  don't  know  that  the  divine  humanity  we 
celebrate  surpasses  the  highest,  or  for  that  mat- 
ter the  very  meanest  type  of  human  life !  But 
our  argument  —  and  that  we  shall  reiterate  in 
the  face  of  your  smug  rationalism,  by  that  we 
shall  everlastingly  prevent  your  pompous  digres- 
sions—  the  argument  of  human  experience  is 
that  the  God  of  humanity  unlike  your  God  of 
Reason  —  for  which  God  be  thanked !  —  does  not 
surpass  all  human  types  absolutely,  does  not 
blindly  and  stolidly  pass  by  all  places  of  human 
agony  and  heroism,  does  not  lose  in  his  great 
Life  all  the  sweetness  and  braveness  of  human 
life !  That  is  a  simple  enough  argument ;  and 
upon  that  and  that  alone  rests  the  strange  case, 
of  the  humanist  —  the  argument  of  human  ex- 
perience, the  real  presence  of  human  things  in 
God! 

For  the  rest  I  imagine  —  you  should  work 
that  word  "  imagine "  thoroughly  into  your 
theological  vocabulary;  it  would  relieve  some  of 
the  stiffness  of  your  subject  —  I  imagine  God 
as  covering  all  types  of  human  beings  rich  and 
poor,  high  and  low,  knave  and  fool,  innocent 
young  children  and  wise  old  men,  human  and  — 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD-HOME        67 

human.  That's  all:  God  knows  that's  enough! 
It  is  a  matter  of  forming  and  by  main  force 
establishing  human  ideals  in  the  world;  of  plac- 
ing God  upon  ground  hallowed  by  our  human 
feet;  of  doing  God  honor  by  admitting  him, 
human  as  he  is!  into  the  region  of  our  human 
privacies;  of  heeding  the  knocking  of  his  spirit 
and  admitting  him  to  our  homes.  It  happens 
that  the  highest  living  ideal  the  normal  spirit 
of  man  has  ever  formed  of  God  and  his  own 
destiny  is  not  comprehended  in  the  idea  of  God's 
being  and  perfection.  His  stiff  being  has  got 
to  be  softened,  his  diabolical  perfection  has  got 
to  be  humanized  for  men  whose  chief  need  is  not 
to  marvel  and  reflect  but  to  live  and  love.  Look 
down  the  vista  of  human  history  and,  if  you  be 
not  hopelessly  blind  as  one  who  having  eyes  re- 
fuses to  see,  you  will  behold  along  the  way  the 
human  faces  of  men's  gods;  you  will  see  God  as 
King  in  a  kingdom,  as  Ruler  in  an  ideal  city,  as 
Father-spirit  in  a  great  world-home;  you  will 
see  man-like  Gods  walking  in  the  ways  of  men. 
Their  divine  faces  are  ofttimes  veiled,  their  names 
unknown,  their  hands  upon  their  mouths,  their 
forms  fading  imperceptibly  into  the  Great  Un- 
known. But  men  have  lived  upon  these  fleeting 
glimpses  they  have  had  of  their  gods'  human 
parts,  have  done  or  refrained  from  this  or  that 
because  of  the  presence  they  felt  of  this  over- 
brooding  Man-God  of  the  ages.  That  is  what 
you  will  see,  I  say,  if  you  be  not  brain-blind. 


68      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

History  alone,  cold  bare  facts,  suffice  for  this 
argument  of  human  experience,  this  God  of  hu- 
man mien. 

Well  then  draw  your  inference  and  your 
method  from  the  facts.  Take  these  human  ideals 
full  seriously ;  vitalize,  idealize,  transfigure  them ; 
be  mystic  and  humanistic  with  a  right  good  will ! 
And  you  will  have  the  royal  truth  of  the  whole 
matter.  Dare  to  postulate  God  as  the  personal 
conscious  growing  spirit  of  human  life,  an 
Energy  and  Spirit  of  harmony  among  us  human 
beings,  a  spirit  of  militant  love,  planet-wide  and 
race-wide!  This  great  Man-God  is  seeking  his 
own.  His  larger  Life  is  no  more  fair  and  just 
and  harmonious  than  your  human  life.  His  Life 
waits  upon,  depends  upon  you,  seeks  to  lead  your 
human  in  ways  of  deeper  and  broader  good  will 
and  sweet  sanity.  God  I  God-Man !  Man-God ! 
God  alive!  he  lives  and  moves  and  has  his  being 
in  you!  man-god!  god-man!  man-alive!  In  you! 
I  say.  He  is  even  as  a  father  who  has  his  own 
spiritual  problems,  all  unknown  to  his  son:  he  is 
struggling  toward  a  larger  Life  even  in  the  very 
hour  when  his  anxious  spirit  is  leading  the  son  in 
the  way  wherein  his  older  soul  has  already  moved. 
All  that  the  Father  has  painfully  wrought  in  his 
larger  Life  may  be  wrecked  and  ruined  in  the 
son's.  Anxiously,  full  anxiously,  does  the 
Father-spirit  wait  upon  us  to  keep  holy  and 
sacred  the  things  of  his  spirit. 

I  conceive  the  World-Life  to  be  just  this:  an 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD-HOME         69 

ever  ascending  scale  of  living  being,  God  the  in- 
dwelling spirit  of  the  whole,  humanity  a  ceaseless 
generation  of  lives  within  his  larger  Life,  hence- 
forth each  man  of  us  responsible, —  not  only 
gifted  with  life  but  before  God  responsible  to  the 
very  last  degree  —  for  his  part  in  the  Life  of  the 
whole,  each  generation  ideally  leading  on  the 
generation  following,  God-Man  the  enduring 
steady  patient  and  hopeful  Leader  of  this  pro- 
cession of  human  spirits  within  his  large,  gener- 
ous and  courageous  Life. 

Ah!  the  mighty,  the  almighty  courage  of  it 
all! 


For  years  I  have  accustomed  myself  to  think 
of  my  God  thus  in  concrete  human  terms;  to 
oppose  all  the  abstractions  of  the  perfectionists 
and  idealists  with  specific  cases  of  God  wherein 
the  perfection  or,  as  the  case  may  be,  the  im- 
perfection of  the  universal  Life  is  most  humanly 
evident.  Such  a  method  does  clear  things, 
does  emphasize  God  tremendously.  In  all  the 
striking  situations  of  life  —  we  may  let  the  pro- 
cession of  humdrum  events  pass  by  unnoticed  — 
in  all  the  conspicuous  and  grave  phenomena  of 
human  history  to  say  and  to  see  "  God  " :  to  con- 
sider whether  the  God  feeling  fits  there:  that  is 
the  method.  A  few  instances  will  make  this 
clearer,  I  hope.  Thus: 


70      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

VI 

Once  I  attended  in  Oxford  a  stupendous  pub- 
lic reception.  The  occasion  was  strikingly,  06- 
viously  great.  The  world's  scholars  were  there 
weltering  and  sweltering  in  "  academic  dress." 
The  Lord  Mayor  of  Oxford  was  "  receiving  " ! 
There  he  stood  silk-stockinged  and  gartered, 
knee-breeched,  wooden-muscled,  solemn-faced, 
closed-mouthed,  circumpressed  with  lackeys  doing 
this  and  that  right  aimlessly, —  in  short  proper 
and  magnifique!  "  My  Lord  Mayor  of  Ox- 
ford!" ...  God! 

vn 

But  a  few  months  later  found  me  intruded 
upon  another  academic  occasion  of  very  different 
atmosphere  and  intention.  It  was  the  time  and 
place  where  a  great  American  university  was  con- 
ferring its  honorary  degrees.  I  think  it  has 
never  yet  been  given  me  to  witness  such  quiet, 
sincere,  well-proportioned  dignity  as  invested  this 
occasion.  The  place  was  pervaded  by  the  almost 
tangible  power  of  a  great  institution;  men  sat 
silenced  by  the  magnificent  energy  of  an  unseen 
wisdom.  The  ceremonies  proceeded  with  the 
solemn  unhurried  dignity  of  a  great  religious 
mass;  the  voice  of  the  university's  president,  de- 
liberate, steady,  serious  and  sincere,  announced 
the  degrees  and  their  causes  to  us  who  had  come 
to  listen.  The  great  men  thus  honored,  it  seemed 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD-HOME         71 

as  if  they  grew  in  very  physique  under  the  strong 
terms  of  that  great  time  and  place.  One,  I  seem 
to  remember,  wept  like  a  little  child  as  he  felt  the 
degree  of  honor  conferred  upon  him  thus  at  the 
end  of  his  long  and  humane  career.  "  Doctors 
of  Letters,"  Doctors  of  Humanity!  .  .  God! 

vin 

Once  I  sat  with  a  lost  soul  in  an  attic  over- 
looking one  of  the  plague  spots  of  this  earth. 
She  was  unclean  and  lean  like  the  starving  hounds 
one  might  see  in  the  alley  hard  by.  Her  jowls 
and  teeth  were  eaten  away  by  a  loathsome  disease. 
For  the  matter  of  a  few  pennies  she  would  have 
groveled  and  licked  my  feet:  she  was  so  low  and 
hungry  and  damned.  Poor  attic  hell!  Poor 
damned  soul!  Sad  frayed  fabric  of  humanity! 
.  .  .  God! 

DC 

There  was  once  a  man,  an  unlicensed  doctor  of 
humanity,  who  spoke  to  such,  healing  them  and 
telling  them  to  go  their  way  and  sin  no  more. 
The  meagre  reports  yet  tell  us  something  of  the 
consummate  power  of  the  man,  the  awful  dignity 
of  his  humanity:  he  moved  unhampered  by 
worldly  properties  or  social  conventions,  upright ! 
gigantic !  a  soul  of  iron,  a  heart  of  sweet-healing 
oil,  a  Man  of  God !  Christ !  .  .  .  God ! 


72      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 


So  you  see  the  method.  God  in  humanity  here 
and  there, —  genuinely,  conspiciously  here  and 
there,  or  as  the  case  may  be,  alas,  not  there  or 
here.  Why  not  apply  the  method  on  an  im- 
mense scale  in  order  to  find  a  genuinely, 
immensely  real  God? 

All  these  years  the  expert  seekers  after  God 
have  been  star-gazing,  deducing  God  in  celestial 
magnitudes  of  one  sort  or  another.  Do  we  do 
some  earth-gazing!  Mount  we  together  to  some 
mystic  height  and  look  —  down!  down  upon  these 
habitations  of  men.  See  the  great  spirit  of  God 
settling  upon  people!  —  Lord  Mayors,  Doctors 
of  Humanity,  damned  souls,  Christs!  God 
drenching  with  his  spirit  live  passionate  people 
like  you  and  me;  God  facing  humanity,  assum- 
ing human  life,  becoming  increasingly  conscious, 
active,  feeling,  alive,  as  his  great  searching  spirit 
approaches  nearer  and  nearer  the  homes  of  men 
and  catches  the  low  murmur  of  their  busy  heroic 
affairs.  God  alive!  .  .  .  God! 

There  are  those,  you  know,  who  would  argue 
upon  this  mount  of  humanistic  vision.  "  God," 
they  monotonously  recite,  "  being  infinite  and 
perfect,  must  of  course  settle  equally  over  the 
world  of  human  beings ;  his  spirit  is  concentrated 
everywhere, —  no  more  here  than  there,  no  lesa 
there  than  here;  infinite,  perfect,  all-wise,  every- 
where! "  But  in  that  there  is  no  vision.  Come 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD-HOME         73 

again  up  the  mount  of  humanistic  vision.  Look 
down,  look  down!  What  do  you  see?  Not  what 
do  you  infer  from  your  monstrously  infinite  pre- 
conception of  God,  but  what  do  you  see?  You 
see  the  spirit  of  God  issuing  from  the  Great  Un- 
known, the  great  Vault  Beyond,  and  approach- 
ing the  homes  of  men ;  his  spirit  spreading  itself 
passably  and  lightly  there  where  men  have  little 
need  or  want  of  him,  lingeringly  and  passionately 
here  where  some  great  crisis  or  tragedy  of  human 
being  demands  something  worth  while  of  his  sup- 
erabundant Life  and  Wisdom.  The  divine  spirit 
most  actively  concentrated  where  the  need  and 
want  are  greatest:  that's  what  you  see,  comrade. 
God-Man!  .  .  .  God! 

XI 

"  But  the  proof,  man !  the  proof ! "  you  de- 
mand. Alas!  there  is  no  proof.  The  thing  we 
are  here  considering  is  too  worthy  to  be  proved. 
Wasn't  it  Tennyson  who  said  somewhere  that 
what  is  worth  proving  can't  be  proved?  Well, 
such  is  the  case  here.  It  is  a  matter  not  for  prov- 
ing but  for  seeing;  not  for  demonstration  but 
for  vision.  That  mount  of  humanistic  vision  we 
were  talking  about  is  of  course  in  your  own  liv- 
ing soul.  Do  you  see  there,  do  you  -find  there  in 
your  own  inner  life,  your  own  mystic  humanity, 
the  courage  and  the  will  to  believe  in  this  tri- 
umphantly and  passionately  regnant  God  of 
humanity?  If  not,  you  are  blind  and,  so  far, 


74       RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

lost !  Your  own  humanity,  such  as  it  is,  is  a  lie ! 
a  most  stupid,  thoughtless,  insensible  lie !  nothing 
short  of  that!  For  lying,  as  I  see  it,  is  just  the 
cutting  off  of  a  tale  of  human  life  before  it  is 
told, —  in  this  instance  the  choking  and  murder- 
ing of  your  humanity  at  just  the  point  where  it 
would  begin  to  live  eternally. 

This  is  what  I  mean  by  being  "  divine " :  a 
God-Man  not  by  any  manner  of  means  absolute 
in  his  being  but  by  all  manner  of  means  absolute 
in  his  ideals,  impulses,  passions.  In  all  that  is 
human  he  must  and  shall  and  will  be  absolute, — 
tenderly,  compassionately  absolute;  absolutely 
patient,  absolutely  hopeful,  absolutely  loving, 
absolutely  brave,  absolutely  human! 

Now  do  you  ask  for  evidence?  Just  open 
your  soul  to  it;  it  will  overwhelm  you,  once  you 
see  it.  Do  you  mean  to  say  you  lack  evidence 
that  a  spirit  of  Life  larger,  deeper,  higher  than 
the  life  we  call  human  is  at  work  in  the  world? 
that  a  great  humane  world-soul  is  toiling  and 
sweating  with  men?  that  sin  is  destructive  and 
goodness  conservative  of  that  Life?  that  the  prin- 
ciple of  increasing  righteousness  is  regnant  and 
shall  —  perhaps  not  must  but  most  certainly 
shall  —  triumph  over  the  lowering  lusts  and  pas- 
sions of  that  Life?  Who  wants  evidence  of  all 
this,  I  say,  is  denying  his  own  humanity,  is  des- 
ecrating his  own  inner  place  of  vision,  is  lying  in 
the  face  of  Man  and  in  the  sight  of  God ! 

A    challenge    to    faith!     Live    like    a    human 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD-HOME         75 

being!  You  will  engender  deep  within  your 
human  soul  a  perfect  passion  of  belief  in  things 
human,  a  perfect  feeling  of  companionship  with 
God-Man  in  all  your  ways  of  life,  a  steady  and 
calm  determination  to  risk  all,  all  your  interests, 
your  ambitions,  your  hopes,  your  powers,  your 
life,  upon  the  issue  and  ultimate  triumph  of 
humane  being,  of  Man-God !  For  you  will  have 
seen  out  there  in  humanity's  unformed  future  a 
destiny  of  human  Life  toward  which  and  in 
which  your  human  and  God's  human  being  to- 
gether are  working  with  a  right  good  will.  To- 
gether then!  On!  On!  For  humanity's  sake, 
for  God's  sake,  on ! 

That  man  alone  blasphemes  who  abuses  in  what 
way  soever  this  deeper  humanity  of  him;  who 
cheapens  his  human  life  and  robs  himself  of  his 
own  rightful,  creative  operations  in  Life.  Man 
alive!  God  does  most  imperatively  rest  upon 
your  life.  Put  your  shoulder  to  the  wheel! 
Sweat,  bleed,  strain,  heave,  love!  Live  like  a 
human  being !  Live  like  a  God ! 

The  whole  weight  of  the  universe  does  rest 
upon  your  shoulders  and  his ;  upon  you,  Man,  and 
upon  him,  God-Man.  Your  life  in  his  is  mystic- 
ally clothed  in  garments  incomparably  beauti- 
fuler  than  these  poor  rags  of  humanity  now  visi- 
ble to  our  naked  eyes.  Who  or  what  can  visibly 
cover  the  immeasurable  breadth  and  width  and 
depth  of  humanity's  God  of  firm  and  patient  and 
hopeful  Life?  Life  increasing  and  abundant; 


76      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

universal  Life;  a  willing  and  glad  symphony  of 
live  persons,  men,  supermen,  angels,  gods,  God ; — 
a  harmony  of  real  people,  half-human,  half- 
divine,  half -men,  half -gods;  men  becoming  gods, 
gods  becoming  men ; —  a  universal  communism  of 
man  and  God,  God-Man,  Man-God:  that  is  what 
one  sees  and,  seeing,  puts  his  shoulder  to  the 
wheel,  helps  move  in  the  energies  of  the  God-Life, 
participates  in  the  making  of  God-Man. 

xn 

I  have  always  felt  this  quality  of  unconquer- 
able humanity  in  Stevenson.  Even  on  his  very 
gravestone,  you  remember,  he  would  have  it  chis- 
eled that  he  laid  him  down  "  with  a  will."  If  you 
can  listen  to  his  lines  on  faith  without  feeling  the 
sharp  sting  of  them,  then  go  bury  thyself  in  the 
world  ground,  out  of  sight  of  all  living  creatures ; 
for  you  may  know  that  your  soul  is  insensible, 
mortified  and  dead  indeed.  Thus: 

"  God,  if  this  were  enough, 

That  I  see  things  bare  to  the  buff 

And  up  to  the  buttocks  in  mire; 

That  I  ask  nor  hope  nor  hire, 

Nut  in  the  husk 

Or  dawn  before  the  dusk, 

Nor  life  beyond  death ; 

God,  if  this  were  faith. 

"  Having  felt  thy  wind  in  my  face 
Spit  sorrow  and  disgrace, 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD-HOME         77 

Having  seen  thy  evil  doom 

In  Golgotha  and  Khartoum, 

And  the  brutes,  the  work  of  thine  hands, 

Fill  with  injustice  lands 

And  stain  with  blood  the  sea; 

If  still  in  my  veins  the  glee 

Of  the  black  night  and  the  sun 

And  the  lost  battle  run; 

If,  an  adept, 

The  iniquitous  lists  I  still  accept 

With  joy,  and  joy  to  endure  and  be  withstood, 

And  still  to  battle  and  perish  for  a  dream  of  good; 

God,  if  that  were  enough. 

"  If  to  feel  in  the  sink  of  the  slough 

And  the  sink  of  the  mire 

Veins  of  glory  and  fire 

Run  through  and  transpierce  and  transpire, 

And  a  secret  purpose  of  glory  in  every  part, 

And  the  answering  glory  of  battle  fill  my  heart, 

To  thrill  with  the  joy  of  girded  men, 

To  go  on  forever  and  fail,  and  go  on  again, 

To  be  mauled  to  the  earth  and  arise, 

And  contend  for  the  shade  of  a  word  and  a  thing 

not  seen  with  the  eyes: 

With  the  half  of  a  broken  hope  for  a  pillow  at  night 
That  somehow  the  right  is  the  right 
And  the  smoothe  shall  bloom  from  the  rough : 
Lord,  if  that  were  enough." 

This  is  Stevenson:  to  thrill  with  the  joy  of 
girded  men,  to  go  on  forever  and  fail,  and  go  on 


78     RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

again,  to  be  mauled  to  the  earth  and  arise,  to 
contend  for  a  thing  not  seen  with  the  eyes !  This 
is  Stevenson  who,  tradition  says,  when  a  disease 
of  the  lungs  disabled  beyond  usefulness  his  good 
right  arm  learned  to  write  with  his  left ;  and  who 
when  the  disability  claimed  his  left  dictated  to  an 
amanuensis  for  hours  and  days;  and  who,  when 
at  last  he  could  no  longer  speak  for  very  weakness 
of  his  despoiled  chest,  learned  to  speak  with  his 
still  free,  though  unarmed,  fingers  the  mute  lan- 
guage of  the  deaf  and  dumb,  that  he  might  yet 
with  his  very  last  drop  of  energy  express  in  some 
wise  the  still  buoyant,  broken  hopes  of  his  trium- 
phant soul!  This  was  Stevenson, —  an  atheist, 
some  called  him ;  let  us  rather  crown  him  suprem- 
est,  bravest  man-god  of  them  all;  deepest  com- 
muner  with  the  invisible  heroisms  of  human  life; 
prof  oundest  believer  in  God-Man ! 

"  Lord,  if  that  were  enough."  Ye  men  of  iron 
hearts!  it  is  enough  and  to  spare.  Grasp  it  and 
share  it,  spread  it  abroad  generously  over  this 
great  sea  of  humanity  weltering  before  you  into 
the  shoreless  regions  of  eternity,  this  unconquer- 
able humanity!  The  eternal  human:  the  eternal 
divine;  the  eternal  man:  the  eternal  God;  God- 
Man  :  Man-God  everlasting ! 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD-HOME         79 

xm 

A  myticism  of  the  will,  I  take  it ; —  and  accept 
it,  too.  I  can  fully  believe  that  such  mysticism, 
if  need  were,  would  create  God;  and  pull  some- 
thing of  a  like  courage  and  human  conscience 
from  out  of  the  very  bowels  of  hell !  Be  a  man 
then,  you  atheist  so-called ;  be  a  man,  a  full  man, 
scrupulously  right  and  brave,  unashamed  and  un- 
afraid in  all  your  actions,  spewing  all  vileness 
from  your  soul !  Be  gigantic !  in  your  own  per- 
son stand  as  straight  and  as  high  as  you  are,  act 
as  if  there  were  a  God;  yea,  as  you  were  a  god! 
And  one  of  these  days,  when  thus  you  stand  forth 
there  in  all  your  dubiety,  yet  in  all  your  risen 
Manhood,  you  will  see  God  —  it  may  be  created, 
awakened,  aroused  in  some  measure  by  your  own 
very  strong  power  of  regnant  Manhood.  As  God 
lives!  it  shall  be  even  so.  And  then  —  the  aw- 
fuler  power,  the  deeper  understanding,  the  won- 
derfuler  companionship  of  your  kind  of  God  will 
be  yours  forevernwre.  Forevermore!  does  that 
not  mean  f  orevermore  ? 

Be  an  atheist,  friend,  if  you  must  in  all  con- 
science. But  avoid  cynicism  and  indolence  of 
soul  as  they  were  the  devil's  own  vices.  Be  quick 
and  noble,  oppose  all  idleness  and  scornfulness  of 
spirit;  and  your  weight,  atheist  though  you  be, 
will  pull  on  the  diviner  scale  of  the  world's  pow- 
ers ;  you  will,  all  unwittingly,  help  God ;  you  will 


80      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 


in  the  end  of  your  life  willingly  yield  to  the 
terful  soul  of  him  I  call  Man-God. 

Let  William  James  speak  a  word  to  us  in  this 
matter.  God  knows  he  is  pagan  enough:  they 
say  he  doesn't  pray  any  morel  Well,  in  the 
words  I  now  quote  he  prays  all  unconsciously,  yet 
actually  enough  to  lead  us  through  doubt  to  a 
reliable  method  of  faith.  Thus : 

"  If  this  be  a  moral  universe ;  if  by  my  acts  I 
be  a  factor  of  its  destinies ;  if  to  believe  where  I 
may  doubt  be  itself  a  moral  act  analogous  to 
voting  for  a  side  not  yet  sure  to  win, —  by  what 
right  shall  they  close  in  upon  me  and  steadily 
negate  the  deepest  conceivable  function  of  my  be- 
ing by  their  preposterous  command  that  I  shall 
stir  neither  hand  or  foot,  but  remain  balancing 
myself  in  eternal  and  insoluble  doubt? 
He  who  commands  himself  not  to  be  credulous  of 
God,  of  duty,  of  freedom,  of  immortality,  may 
again  and  again  be  indistinguishable  from  him 
who  dogmatically  denies  them.  Skepticism  in 
moral  matters  is  an  active  ally  of  immorality. 
Who  is  not  for  is  against.  The  universe  will 
have  no  neutrals  in  these  questions.  In  theory  or 
in  practice,  dodge  or  hedge,  or  talk  as  we  like 
about  a  wise  scepticism,  we  are  really  doing  volun- 
teer service  for  one  side  or  the  other." 

Be  credulous  of  God:  that  is  the  method,  the 
way  of  all  life,  the  way  of  faith.  And  if  you  will 
thus  be  credulous  of  God  you  may  by  the  same 
token  develop  inwardly  the  most  precious  creed 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD-HOME         81 

your  soul  can  imagine  or  ask  of  the  great  world's 
soul  —  a  full  creed  in  very  human  truth,  a  creed- 
ful  of  invisible  imperatives,  of  eternal  verities,  of 
everlasting  humanities.  Your  ample  creed  will 
cover  and  protect  and  sanctify  all  that  your  hu- 
man life  can  want  or  hope  for  of  comfort,  power, 
efficiency,  decency,  sanity,  bravery  in  life. 

Among  my  more  intimate  documents  I  have  a 
letter  from  just  such  a  masterful  man.  He  is 
dying  away  out  on  the  "  great  divide  "  of  the 
Rocky  mountains.  His  life  has  staggered  under 
blow  after  blow  of  fate.  At  each  turn  of  the 
road  he  has  lived  dutifully,  manfully,  naturally 
and  unaffectedly  leaving  the  pleasant  prospect  he 
once  had  seen  before  him  in  his  life  and  quietly 
taking,  without  even  so  much  as  a  looking-back 
or  a  whimper,  terribly  rough  courses;  courses 
which  you  and  I,  my  friends,  would  have  shrunk 
from,  I'm  afraid.  The  disease  which  now  carries 
him  off  into  the  Great  Unknown,  that  mysterious 
"  Perhaps  "  beyond  this  life,  he  contracted,  I  am 
told,  in  ministering  to  a  similarly  stricken  sister. 
He  is  to  my  mind  a  nobleman  of  high  degree. 

I  had  written  him  telling  him  of  my  great 
pride  and  fondness  of  him:  he  had  once  been  my 
student;  and  telling  him  something  of  the  cour- 
age and  wisdom  I,  the  teacher,  had  found  in  him, 
the  pupil :  how  he  had  taught  me  great  things  all 
unconsciously.  He  writes  to  this  effect :  "  Some 
days  I  am  better,  others  worse.  I  am  still  strong 
enough  to  work  an  hour  or  so  a  day  in  the  field. 


82      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

This  keeps  my  body  and  my  soul  together. 
When  they  are  no  longer  together  what  will  befall 
me  I  do  not  know.  I  can  only  doubt  and  hope 
and  love  —  that's  all." 

But  God  knows,  my  friend,  that's  enough! 
With  what  mare,  in  God's  name,  can  a  man  face 
reality?  with  what  more  of  character?  with  what 
more  of  Tightness?  with  what  purer  garments  of 
humanity,  nay,  of  divinity,  can  a  man  clothe  him- 
self ere  he  go  upon  his  long  journey?  —  than 
modest  doubt,  strong  hope  and  self-destroying 
love  ? 

Courage,  comrade!  out  there  on  the  great  di- 
vide, out  there  on  the  universe's  great  divide! 
Listen !  let  your  soul  hearken  toward  that  Silence 
of  Eternity !  What  is  that  articulate,  mysterious 
breath  of  God  saying?  "  Hasten  on  with  me, 
thou  great  strong  man,  thou  child  of  immaculate 
soul,  thou  heart  of  my  Life,  thou  Man  of  my 
Soul.  Together,  through  eternity  together,  we 
shall c  doubt  and  hope  and  love  —  that's  all.'  " 


Ill 

LIFE  EVERLASTING:  ITS  CONDITION 

i 

The  spiritual  forms  on  which  men  have  woven 
their  growing  lives  are,  as  it  has  always  seemed 
to  me,  singularly  few  and  simple.  How  many 
things,  how  many  stupidities,  do  you  believe?  O, 
say  perhaps  a  thousand  or  so.  How  many  things, 
how  many  realities,  do  you  need  to  believe? 
Well,  say  about  ten,  more  or  less.  Is  that  not  the 
reply  of  past  generations,  the  judgment  of  his- 
tory ? 

Given  ten,  more  or  less,  flexible  and  limpid  be- 
liefs, you  are  equipped  for  life  now  and  everlast- 
ing !  Keep  the  currents  of  your  being  spontane- 
ous and  free;  flee  for  dear  life  from  all  dog- 
matisms and  their  "  categories  " ;  hold  your  soul's 
home  simple  and  comfortable  with  an  equipment 
of,  say,  ten  changeable  and  yet  substantial  neces- 
sities, rules,  regulations,  beliefs ;  you  are  fixed  for 
all  times  and  places  of  God's  home.  Remember 
the  "  woes  "  of  that  once  giant  of  Nazareth :  ut- 
terly oust  from  your  life  all  the  Scribes  and 
Pharisees,  not  those  merely  whom  you  may  en- 
counter on  the  street, —  they  are  of  such  sour 
mien  altogether  that  one  easily  casts  them  out  — 
but  those  also  whom  you  may  feel  operating  in 
the  secret  places  of  your  soul;  the  scribal  and 
83 


84       RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

Pharisaical  creatures  of  your  very  mind ;  the  inner 
tendency  to  harden  and  dogmatize ;  the  inclination 
to  fix  the  living  impulsiveness  of  your  inner  lives. 
The  point  is,  to  keep  open-minded,  spontaneous, 
free,  limpid,  flexible,  radical  in  all  matters  that  do 
genuinely  matter. 

Take,  for  example,  that  word  "  eternal "  which 
shall  concern  us  in  these  following  pages.  What 
a  ghastly,  monstrous  thing  the  scribes  and  Phari- 
sees have  made  of  it !  Just  think  of  being  impris- 
oned in  that  damnably  perfect  state  they  describe 
as  eternal!  just  imagine  being  held  there  beyond 
even  the  power  of  death  to  set  you  free !  just  con- 
sider your  soul,  an  entity,  grinning  out  its  imper- 
ishable life  in  sickly  eternal  beatitude,  or  else, 
more's  the  pity,  gnashing  its  spectral  teeth  and 
wailing  out  its  hopelessly  eternal  life !  Whenever 
a  man  tells  me  his  soul  is  necessarily  eternal  I  want 
(to  reply,  "  Ay,  and  by  the  same  token  it  is  hope- 
lessly eternal; — hopeless,  whether  in  heaven  or 
in  hell." 

The  trouble  is  that  we  have  in  our  Christian 
eschatology  (as  the  technical  term  has  it)  an  at- 
tempted confection  of  two  most  alien  elements,  the 
one  Judaic,  the  other  Hellenic.  The  Jew's  con- 
ception of  future  things  —  I  mean  even  his  idea 
of  his  own  race's  future,  granting  to  the  critics 
what  in  my  uncritical  moments  I  very  much 
doubt;  namely,  that  the  Jew  had  no  vision  of  a 
future  after  death  —  his  idea  of  future  things,  I 
say,  was  full  of  a  very  concrete  and  splendid 


LIFE  EVERLASTING  85 

imagery;  it  was  a  place  of  life,  a  condition  of 
active,  progressive  righteousness;  its  only  alter- 
native was  not  an  eternally  congealed,  passionless 
heaven  nor  yet  an  eternally  molten,  evenly  white- 
hot  hell;  the  only  opposite  he  could  conceive  to 
this  natural  and  faithful  Life  was  —  Death ! 
"  See,  I  have  set  before  thee  this  day  life  and 
good,  and  death  and  evil."  "  I  have  set  before 
you  life  and  death,  blessing  and  cursing:  there- 
fore choose  life  that  both  thou  and  thy  seed  may 
live;  that  thou  mayest  love  the  Lord  thy  God; 
that  thou  mayest  obey  his  voice,  and  that  thou 
mayest  cleave  unto  him ;  for  he  is  thy  life  and  the 
strength  of  thy  days." 

Future  things  looked  far  otherwise  to  the 
Greek.  In  his  view  life  here  is  no  specially  stren- 
uous affair,  no  austerely  arranged  matter  of 
righteousness.  The  thing  is,  to  live  naturally 
while  you  live,  to  follow  the  natural  course  of 
human  events,  to  express  your  proper  genius  for 
the  sheer  pleasure  of  the  thing  itself,  to  live  natu- 
rally, to  die  naturally  and  then  enter  Elysium 
naturally.  "  What  is  Elysium  ? "  you  ask. 
Well,  it  is  what  you  might  naturally  expect. 
What  could  a  disembodied,  fully  expressed  soul 
be  but  a  shade,  a  ghost,  a  naturally  empty,  con- 
templative sort  of  soul  in  that  same  sort  of  eter- 
nal life,  a  spectral,  phantasmal  kind  of  being? 
To  discharge  his  will  and  his  genius  fully  here 
in  this  life,  then  to  walk  contemplatively  and  so- 
berly among  the  shades  of  Elysium  —  all  this 


86     -RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

seemed  proper,  natural,  desirable  to  your  typical 
Greek. 

Now  our  modern  heaven  or  hell  is,  as  I  was 
just  saying,  an  attempted  confection  of  these  two 
essentially  alien  elements,  one  drawn  from  the 
genius  of  Jewish,  the  other  from  that  of  Hellenic 
culture.  As  Judaic,  heaven  and  hell  are  concrete, 
explicit,  filled  with  fleshly  men  and  women.  As 
Hellenic  these  mythologic  places  are  static,  fixed, 
full  of  vague  harmless  shades  of  being.  In  Chris- 
tian tradition  the  alternative  of  Life  is  no  longer 
imaged  as  natural  death  but  as  unnatural  life; 
life  eternally  and  hopelessly  balanced  in  "  sanctifi- 
cation  "  with  its  very  proper  rewards  or  in  sin 
with  its  very  hot  torments,  world  without  end, 
world  without  change;  a  world  most  dull  and 
deadening;  in  heaven  every  prospect  equally  rav- 
ishing, in  hell  every  spot  equally  hot. 

In  such  a  state,  any  psychologist  will  tell  you, 
the  psychophysical  organism  he  calls  the  soul 
could  not  endure  for  long;  it  must  needs  die  of 
very  dullness ;  there  is  no  stimulus,  he  will  explain, 
in  a  steadily  unremitting  pain  or  pleasure ; —  no 
stimulus,  no  response,  no  life  in  the  end.  The  in- 
evitable outcome  of  such  a  psychophysical  per- 
formance as  would  go  on  in  heaven  or  hell  would 
be  —  msensibility. 

There  are  those  who  will  complain  that  this  is 
a  rather  shallow  caricature  of  the  Christian 
eschatology.  Well,  that  points  my  argument: 
the  Christian  eschatology,  once  you  clear  it  of 


LIFE  EVERLASTING  87 

confusing,  learned  interpretations,  is  shallow; 
itself  is  a  caricature  of  two  utterly  diverse  ideas 
of  future  things :  Judaic  moral  vitality  and  Greek 
naturalism.  The  man  of  militant  righteousness, 
the  Jew,  actually  fighting  death  and  sin ;  the 
Greek,  a  man  of  contemplative,  healthy-minded- 
ness,  actually  living  a  present  life  and  amusing 
himself  meanwhile  with  speculations  upon  pure 
goodness  and  pure  being  —  these  two  men  do  not 
naturally  mix  together.  Whenever  the  Jew 
caught  a  vision  of  the  future  he  saw  a  Jew  there, 
or  his  race  there  if  you  will,  busily  engaged  in 
the  way  of  righteousness;  whenever  the  Greek 
had  a  vision  of  his  future  soul  he  found  it  a  shade 
moving  deliberately  and  vaguely  here  and  there 
in  a  wholly  phantasmal,  future  world.  Such  di- 
verse temperaments  can  unite  only  superficially. 
The  combination  of  such  disparate  world-views 
into  heaven  and  hell  must  needs  be  shallow. 

As  for  me  I  prefer  the  Life-and-Death  con- 
ception in  all  its  original  purity.  In  all  sober- 
ness of  mind  I  declare  I  would  rather  die  than 
go  to  heaven  —  unless  it  were  on  the  very  fron- 
tier of  heaven,  on  the  borderland  of  hell,  in  the 
celestial  slums,  far  from  the  shades  of  heaven,  the 
Graeco-Jewish  scribes,  Pharisees  and  doctors  of 
eschatology!  On  the  borderland  of  hell,  on  the 
frontier  of  heaven,  where  common  people  are  still 
getting  saved,  give  me  endless  life  there!  There 
is  something  worth  while !  Sweating  through  the 
day,  then  intelligibly  resting  by  night ;  spreading 


88     RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

the  spirit  of  sweet  brotherhood  abroad  to  cool  the 
hot  lives  and  cheer  the  broken  hearts  of  one's 
fellows;  living!  freely,  limpidly,  gloriously  liv- 
ing! verging  always  upon  sorrow,  catastrophe, 
hell !  but  keeping  spontaneous,  courageous,  man- 
ful !  measuring  eternity  not  in  years  —  God !  how 
weary,  how  deadly  dull  the  years,  were  they 
throughout  eternity  blissful,  fulfilled,  uneventful, 
unangered,  serene  and  all  that  silly  dream  of  idle 
souls!  —  but  in  instants,  the  instantaneous  mov- 
ing out  toward  Life  or  Death  or  God  knows  what ; 
with  no  pusillanimous  thought  of  what,  but  only 
with  surpassing  joy  and  eagerness  for  the  work 
and  life  of  the  passing  time.  Is  such  a  Life  not 
eternal  in  God's  world?  Then  so  much  the  worse 
for  God,  I  may  say. 

n 

We  may  gather  sweet  wisdom  in  this  matter  out 
of  the  mouths  of  babes  and  sucklings.  How 
does  a  child  live  its  days?  Well,  for  one  thing, 
it  solves  its  ultimate  problems  by  the  process  of 
living.  Have  you  ever  watched  a  living  child 
at  its  play?  If  not,  your  philosophy  can  in  no 
wise  follow  the  method  of  life.  In  his  child's  play 
you  may  observe  in  all  naked  simplicity  the  proc- 
ess of  living.  See  him  play,  then!  A  problem 
arises  at  some  point  in  his  otherwise  fluent  game. 
What  does  he  do?  Does  he  hesitate?  does  he  con- 
coct a  consistent  and  completed  plan  for  the  fur- 
ther conducting  of  his  living  enterprise?  does  he 


LIFE  EVERLASTING  89 

ratiocinate?  By  no  means.  He  simply  alters 
by  a  hair's  breadth,  or  it  may  be  radically,  the 
original  plan  of  his  play.  Perhaps  the  rude 
thing  that  does  seemingly  stand  there,  an  imperti- 
nence and  impediment  in  his  way,  he  plays  is  not 
there;  thereby  reducing  its  impedimental  propor- 
tions, if  indeed  not  removing  them  altogether, 
root  and  branch.  The  child  life  is,  in  a  word, 
free,  fluent,  limpid,  uncategorical.  And  he  does 
in  very  truth  live  in  a  world  likewise  plastic,  fluent, 
playful. 

It  is  only  since  Groos  published  his  books  on  the 
Play  of  Animals  and  the  Play  of  Man  that  we 
have  come  to  a  fair  understanding  of  this  playing 
instinct.  For  it  is  an  instinct,  he  tells  us.  As 
such,  it  does  work ;  it  does  preserve  the  life  of  the 
child-animal  and  animal-child.  The  world  they 
inwardly  image  in  play  is  just  the  outwardly  real 
world  they  front  in  later  life.  The  region  of 
their  plays  does  open  out  imperceptibly  and  un- 
brokenly  into  the  region  of  their  larger  and  sol- 
emner  concerns  in  life. 

Perhaps  the  great  world  is  in  very  truth  a 
play-ground,  a  fighting-ground, —  a  real  home,  a 
real  heaven,  a  most  genuine  Valhalla?  Perhaps 
if  you  play  here  in  all  childlike  seriousness,  you 
too  will  find  that  the  world  of  your  inwardly  as- 
sumed beauty  and  goodness  and  harmony  is  just 
the  outwardly  real  world  which  your  not  playful 
fellows,  God  pity  them !  declare  to  be  ugly,  hard, 
material,  godless,  devilish?  Perhaps  if  you  live 


90       RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

here  and  now  as  if  you  were  an  immortal  god 
of  a  sort  you  will  find  that  your  playing  at 
divinity  has  in  solemn  effect  prepared  you  for  a 
real  world,  a  real  future  divinity  you  will  front 
after  death?  Perhaps  the  region  of  your  play- 
ing at  divinity  will  shade  imperceptibly  and  un- 
brokenly  into  a  region  of  larger,  invisibler  reali- 
ties of  Life?  Well,  children  anyway  find  play- 
ing a  good  instinct ;  they  never  quite  know  when 
the  play  ceases  and  the  reality  begins;  they  are 
not  conscious  where  earth  knocks  off  and  heaven 
begins,  never  quite  mindful  of  the  difference  be- 
tween make-believe  and  reality.  Perhaps,  as 
things  invisibly  and  indubitably  are,  there  w  no 
such  difference.  It  is  a  good  instinct,  surely,  that 
goes  naturally  and  playfully  from  childhood  to 
old  age.  Why  not  a  trustworthy  instinct  that 
would  go  naturally  from  old  age  to  Death, — 
nay,  to  Life? 

If  you  complain  that  you  do  not  find  this  argu- 
ment convincing,  I  reply  that  you  have  misun- 
derstood me  utterly,  from  beginning  to  end;  for 
I  am  not  arguing  at  all.  I  find  arguing  in  such 
matters  unprofitable  and  even  hateful.  I  have 
seen  men  interpose  arguments,  protests,  realities, 
cold  facts,  into  the  plays  of  children.  I  for  one 
am  just  child  enough  to  doubt  whether  their 
alleged  realities  were  cold  facts  after  all;  just 
child  enough  to  hate  them  for  their  complacent, 
solemn,  brutal  interruption  of  Life's  Game. 


LIFE  EVERLASTING  91 

Your  contemptible  vender  of  solid  facts  is  a  pub- 
lic nuisance  and  should  be  outlawed  on  Life's 
Play-ground.  He  is  a  foreigner  there,  knows  not 
the  language  of  those  playing  there,  nor  has  he 
any  unspoken  understanding  of  the  serious  play 
going  forward  there.  Off  with  him  to  the  dun- 
geon! He  will  be  happier  there,  I  think;  for 
in  that  abyss  bottomed  with  hard  facts  he  and  his 
tribe  of  fact-collectors  may  rap  this  and  that 
solidity  to  their  heart's  content,  world  without 
end.  They  won't  ever  discover  that  they  are  not 
in  the  real  world  of  God's  sunlight  and  changing 
seasons;  that  they  are  instead  in  the  very  pit- 
bottom  of  being.  Off  with  them  to  their  dun- 
geon-heaven, then ! 

In  the  upper  region  of  God's  everlasting  sun- 
light, where  flowers  may  still  bear  fruit,  and  men 
are  growing  to  a  fuller  stature  of  Manhood,  where 
things  are  not  solid  in  fact  but  subject  to  the  will 
of  man,  fluent  in  the  will  of  God, —  in  that  upper 
world  we  must  become  as  a  little  child ;  like  a  little 
child  hoping  and  believing  all  things;  eternally 
playing  right  really,  right  seriously;  knowing 
nothing  except  a  quick  responsiveness  to  all  the 
swelling  processes  of  Life.  In  the  most  literal 
sense  must  we  leave  the  rest  to  God  —  hoping  and 
believing  that  in  his  great  world-home,  in  his  im- 
measurable battle-ground  will  be  found  fair  fields ; 
everlasting  breathing-spaces;  goodly  instruments 
of  living  being  innumerable;  Life  evermore. 


92      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

Does  God  not  thus  environ  us  with  possibilities  of 
life,  life,  life!  then  so  much  the  worse  for  God,  as 
I  have  said. 

ni 

When  you  ask  the  child  on  what  solid  ground 
his  play  rests,  or  what  its  certain  outcome  is  to 
be,  you  spoil  the  whole  business  for  him.  The 
very  soul  of  it,  and  of  him  too,  subsists  upon  in- 
securities, possibilities ;  the  very  zest  of  his  play- 
ing and  being  lies  in  the  power  he  holds  and  wields 
of  changing  the  program;  of  playing  good  and 
bad,  good-man  and  bad-man,  God  and  Devil,  with 
the  self -same  instruments  of  life  and  on  the  self- 
same ground  of  being.  A  play  planned  for  him 
in  its  every  detail  and  enduring,  suppose,  for  even 
an  hour  or  so  is  to  the  natural  child  a  most  un- 
mitigated abomination  with  no  touch  of  attrac- 
tiveness in  the  whole  wearisome  prospect.  He 
must  have  range,  freedom,  prospect  of  change, 
power  of  alteration,  risk, —  or  he  dies. 

Well,  it  is  even  so  with  men  of  iron  constitu- 
tion. In  this  great  affair  of  everlasting  life,  for 
example,  how  they  despise  and  refute  your  argu- 
ments and  your  descriptions !  You  begin  to  coun- 
sel with  them,  saying :  "  Immortality  is  proved 
thus  and  so."  But  before  you  have  done  speak- 
ing they  are  off  into  regions  of  untried  and  un- 
proved possibilities  of  being.  Just  essay  to  de- 
scribe the  "  next  world  "  to  him ;  scrupulously 
avoid  putting  into  your  description  any  dash  of 
fairy-land  where  an  unheard-of  and  as  it  were  im- 


LIFE  EVERLASTING  93 

possible  thing  may  happen  at  any  moment,  where 
abysses  may  open  up  or  false  by-ways  lead  a 
man  to  a  lower  region  if  he  do  not  watch  out  — 
describe  the  "  next  world  "  to  him  with  this  pain- 
ful and  patient  accuracy,  I  say,  and  in  the  end 
of  your  efforts  you  will  find  him  gone  in  a  scep- 
tical disregard  of  your  pretty  exactitudes  and  with 
a  barbarous  immediate  joy  in  the  next  step, — 
whether  into  a  next  world  or  not,  who  knows?  Is 
a  next  world  there?  So  much  the  better  for  the 
man  who  enters  it  full-fledged,  full-grown.  Is  a 
next  step  not  there?  "  So  much  the  worse  for 
the  God  of  things  as  they  are,"  he  says.  What 
the  next  world  is  or  even  that  it  is  is,  as  he  sees 
it,  a  matter  beyond  the  beginning  of  your  knowl- 
edge and  in  all  regards  beyond  the  ends  of  your 
voluble  descriptions. 

I  have  observed  that  children  and  natural  men 
do  actually  live  upon  mystery.  To  both,  your 
literalist,  your  absolutist,  your  rationalist  is  of  all 
creatures  on  God's  earth  the  most  pestiferous  and 
preposterous.  To  them,  I  mean  children  and 
strong  men,  all  life  is  impulsive,  passionate,  spon- 
taneous, free,  risky.  To  him,  I  mean  your  cool- 
headed,  cow-eyed  rationalist,  such  natural  life  is 
loud,  coarse,  in  bad  form,  ill-advised,  over-heated, 
childish.  I  must  say  that  I  cannot  feel  the  force 
of  the  latter's  argument ;  it  is  so  ponderous  that 
it  does  not  really  hit  one;  it  passes  one  by  like 
some  monstrous  opaque  body,  eclipsing  God's  sun 
for  a  moment  but  soon  lumbering  on  into  that 


94      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

shoreless  region  where  float  in  utter  vacuity  all 
such  dense,  inconsiderable  monsters  of  the  world's 
being.  In  passing  on  his  way  to  that  monstrous 
region  he  condescends  to  tell  you  that  your  life 
is  too  passionate ;  that  you  are  too  impulsive ;  that 
you  are  a  fool  to  take  the  risks  you  do  in  being; 
and  all  that.  And  all  that  he  calls  argument. 
Why !  it  is  no  more  than  description.  He  leaves 
open  the  whole  question  of  fact.  Is  life  perhaps 
not  all  the  better  for  being  just  what  he  describes 
it  to  be:  impulsive,  passionate,  childlike?  That 
question,  I  imagine,  will  be  everlastingly  open. 
You  will  never  know  whether  or  not  it  had  been 
better  to  have  lived  sedately  or  passionately, 
agedly  or  youthfully,  conservatively  or  radically, 
until  indeed  you  have  come  to  life's  end;  until 
Being's  Great  Decision  has  been  handed  down  in 
the  world's  ultimate  Judgment.  That  is,  never. 
For  there  is  no  life's  end,  there  is  no  ultimate  deci- 
sion, no  absolute  Judge.  I  see  no  help  for  it: 
we've  just  got  to  take  a  chance,  to  follow  our  own 
native  instinct,  our  deepest  soul  in  this  matter. 
Live  hotly  if  you  be  sincerely  passionate,  calmly 
if  you  be  incurably  anaemic.  Be  yourself  in  any 
case!  By  that  means,  or  else  by  no  means,  you 
will  fit  yourself  for  Death,  or  for  Life. 

A  man  with  any  iron  in  his  constitution,  with 
any  zest  of  youth  in  his  no  matter  how  aged  veins, 
will  be  apt  to  cast  his  vote  on  the  side  of  the  great 
world-soul's  passions,  the  great  God-Man's  zest 
in  life,  the  great  Man-God's  appetite  for  life  ever- 


LIFE  EVERLASTING  95 

lasting.  By  this  I  do  not  mean  to  celebrate 
undisciplined  souls :  yet  for  the  life  of  me  I  can- 
not but  recognize  in  them  a  certain  native  strength 
and  health  of  mind.  Thus  Whitman,  Carlyle, 
Nietzsche  and  a  plenty  of  others  were  of  this  un- 
disciplined type.  In  one  way  or  other  they  have 
done  a  bit  of  mischief  in  the  world,  and  no  mis- 
take;—  mischief,  that  is,  among  unbridled,  unli- 
censed, young  fools!  For  that  I  am  sorry 
enough ;  but  I  can  understand  why  they  burst 
forth,  why  they  so  spectacularly  and  madly  broke 
over  their  traces.  It  was  because  they  were  irri- 
tated past  enduring  by  the  wooden  steadiness,  the 
hauteur,  the  very  hateful  complacencies  of  the 
world's  godly  authorities.  Not  to  know  even  the 
beginning  of  lust  or  life  or  work,  to  live  in  a 
studied  disregard  of  the  sinner's  hot  body,  or  of 
the  worker's  sweating  brow  and  aching  soul,  to 
steadily  celebrate  a  God  of  your  own  making 
whose  sole  raison  d'etre  is  that  he  suits  you  and 
authorizes  your  sort  of  life  in  all  its  idle,  emas- 
culated propriety  and  calm  sanity, —  there  is  no 
authority  in  that.  That  but  breeds  passion,  re- 
volt, atheism  in  strong  men, —  and  in  children. 
From  such  a  studied  propriety  children  and  strong 
men  always  shrink  fearfully  away.  To  them 
your  self-conscious  arrangement  of  life's  spon- 
taneous activities  is  nothing  short  of  life's  death 
and  destruction. 

Life,  as  one  should  see  it,  is  playfulness,  pas- 
sion, power  not  abused  but  mastered,  not  dissi- 


96      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

pated  but  concentrated;  life  mastered  and  con- 
centrated upon  a  something  eternally  unformed 
and  unmastered ;  life  ever  becoming,  ever  coming 
to  be;  life  eternally  facing  a  mystery  of  possible 
being  and  power ;  life  bristling  with  passions  mas- 
tered, sobered,  solemnized,  worlds  without  end; 
life,  a  Beyond  ever  opening  out  and  blooming 
with  the  flower  of  manhood ;  eternity,  the  reckon- 
ing of  this  everlastingly  unrealized  Life!  Men 
of  iron  constitution,  even  as  children  in  the  mys- 
terious rites  of  their  play-world,  will  always  ac- 
cept this  mystery  of  Life's  continuously  unful- 
filled Game.  For  them  there  is  no  charm  in  that 
fulfilled,  eternally  doddering,  senile  Proper-Life 
portrayed  in  the  world's  Book  of  the  Wise;  no 
risk,  no  life  in  the  categories  of  your  worldly- 
wise,  quite  dead  authorities. 

The  man  of  iron,  if  you  look  down  upon  him, 
appears  as  an  enfant  terrible,  an  enfant  perdu  in 
fact.  "  Is  he  not  a  child  lost  in  being,  making 
a  foolish  and  terrible  game  of  life  ?  "  This  is  the 
perennial  query  of  the  world's  psychophysical 
anaemics.  The  judgment  from  immemorial  time 
of  the  lookers-down  upon  life's  places  of  battle 
and  sin  has  been  that  the  whole  thing,  all  that  ac- 
tive battling  life  down  there  is  a  foolish,  wasteful, 
over-impulsive,  over-passionate  business ;  "  really 
somewhat  vulgar,  don't  you  know."  The  look- 
ers-down naturally  wonder  why  these  busy,  con- 
tentious workers  down  there  don't  look  up  now 
and  then.  "Why  don't  they  look  up?"  Has 


LIFE  EVERLASTING  97 

it  never  occurred  to  you,  dear  looker-down,  what 
the  true  reason  is?  These  men's  business  in  life 
is  so  vital,  so  soul-involving,  so  immediate,  instant, 
quick,  that  they,  unlike  you,  have  no  leisure  to 
enjoy  the  eternal  prospect.  One  glance  upward 
for  them!  and  then  they  must  back  and  down 
again  into  the  midst  of  the  world's  great  spon- 
taneous, passionate  Life. 

"  Can  it  be,"  you  ask,  "  that  these  rude,  strong, 
passionate  men  are  indifferent  then  to  the  pros- 
pect of  divine  things,  of  future  life,  and  all 
that  ?  "  No ;  if  you  will  but  descend  from  your 
high  place  of  conventional  securities  and  risk 
living  for  a  season  with  these  uncouth,  pragmatic 
men,  venturing  with  them  upon  their  own  plane 
of  uncertainties  and  humane  risks;  you  will  find 
them  not  stolidly  indifferent  to  the  prospect  of 
life,  even  of  everlasting  life,  if  only  it  be  viewed 
from  their  level  of  real  life.  Your  plain  man 
does  indeed  view  with  a  certain  contempt  and 
wholesome  resentment  your  frantic  attempts  to 
penetrate  the  mysteries  of  the  future,  your  nerv- 
ous endeavor  to  throw  yourself,  as  it  were  bodily, 
over  into  a  region  he  conceives  to  be  utterly  prob- 
lematic and  unknowable.  He  wants  little  of  your 
metaphysical  arguments  and  still  less  of  your 
psychic  researches.  As  a  class  these  robust  men 
are  in  truth  sceptics  on  the  side  of  their  pure  rea- 
son;—  who  indeed  is  not  in  such  wise  sceptical? 
But  you  will  not  find  them  stubbornly  opposed  to 
any  vision  underlying  your  arguments  and  re- 


98      RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

searches.  They  protest  not  against  that,  but 
rather  against  the  to  them  miserable  caricature 
your  contentions  and  evidences  make  of  that  in- 
visible Life-beyond-life  they  heroically  accept 
without  argument  and  without  visible  facts  to 
support  their  case.  A  man  of  patient  and  pas- 
sionate faithfulness,  the  man  who  is  ready  to  risk 
his  everlasting  life  upon  the  grand  assumption, 
the  great  "  Perhaps  "  that  the  world  is  in  God 
eternally,  inwardly,  reliably  good, —  such  an  one, 
I  say,  feels  there  is  danger  in  all  this  arguing  and 
whimpering  and  scurrying  about  it  and  about. 
He  has  watched  you  up  there  on  your  plane  of 
lofty  argument  and  occult  experiment.  And  he 
has  observed  that  you  have  sometimes  lost  your 
awareness  of  eternal  life  in  your  desperate  battle 
of  words.  In  his  inmost  soul  your  man  of  iron 
feels  this  condition  of  life  itself;  the  condition, 
namely,  of  able-souled  fitness  for  life,  of  spiritual 
readiness  for  any  world  whatever  of  living  real- 
ity. Meanwhile  in  you  he  sometimes  finds  this 
readiness  and  fitness  to  live  perilously  reduced 
and  obscured  by  all  your  wasteful  conj  ectures  and 
experiments  in  future  things. 

You  cannot  have  lived  long  in  the  world  of  real 
men  without  having  observed  this:  that  your 
speculative  arguments,  mystical  appeals  and  sci- 
entific demonstrations  find  a  response  only  in 
souls  already  in  advance  of  your  argument;  in 
lives  whose  fitness  and  readiness  for  the  Thing 
itself,  the  everlasting  thing  itself,  is  already  ha- 


LIFE  EVERLASTING  99 

bitual  and  in  need  of  no  argument  whatsoever. 
There  are  just  such  men  in  this  present  world; 
men  whose  own  wholesome  lives  do  most  prac- 
tically argue  immortality;  men  whose  present 
purity  and  sanity  of  soul  is  ever  in  advance  of 
your  tedious  arguments  and  evidences  of  immor- 
tality; men  who  by  living  straight  and  good- 
heartedly  here  and  now  have  most  actively,  right 
joyously,  quite  unconsciously  argued  their  endless 
right  to  a  place  in  the  eternal  good-heart  of 
things. 

And,  it  would  seem,  a  diseased  and  cowardly 
soul  argues  equally  against  its  immortality  — 
most  practically  and  frightfully  against  its  right 
to  an  eternal  part  in  the  everlasting  good  soul 
of  the  world.  His  unfitness,  his  unreadiness  for 
life  should  cause  you  to  pause  a  moment  in  your 
monotonous  recital  of  arguments  from  the  books ; 
to  pause  at  least  long  enough  to  pity  him  in  his 
very  sorry  case.  For  despite  your  scholastic  ac- 
count of  his  soul  as  entity  is  his  real  soul  not  quite 
evidently  dying?  already  declining  under  some 
incurable  disease  of  the  spirit?  Can  all  your 
arguments  and  evidences  put  together  again 
what  the  real  and  devilish  powers  of  the  world 
have  wrought  asunder?  Surely,  his  is  a  case  not 
for  deliberation  but  for  action,  not  for  meta- 
physical meditations,  but  for  the  ministrations  of 
a  very  vigorous  and  very  healing,  very  invisible 
power  of  Life,  if  such  there  be  in  this  world  or 
the  next. 


100    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

The  thing  is,  not  to  bandy  words ;  not  to  stop 
to  consider  any  theory  of  the  soul  as  impeccable 
or  inviolable;  not  to  leave  it  to  its  own  devices 
because  it  is  an  invincible  entity,  an  indestructible 
substance,  a  spiritual  atom,  or  God  knows  what; 
but  in  the  presence  of  the  practical,  gruesome,  ac- 
complished fact  of  a  soul  rotting  in  its  sin-disease 
to  take  active  measures  to  relieve  and  release  it, 
whatever  it  is,  into  the  free  and  open  air  of  God's 
health-giving  universe.  I  imagine  —  I  say  it  in 
all  reverence  and  silent  solemnness  of  spirit  —  I 
presume  to  believe  that  this  is  in  truth  God's 
method:  surely  he  allows  entities,  substances  and 
suchlike,  if  suchlike  there  be,  to  care  for  them- 
selves whilst  his  great,  humane  spirit  is  engaged 
most  actively,  painfully  and  lovingly  in  the  guid- 
ing toward  eternity,  in  the  healing  toward  san- 
ity in  perpetuity,  of  living  souls  like  you  and  me, 
and  that  sinner  over  there. 

It  takes  a  sinner  in  fact  to  try  to  the  depths 
the  power  and  patience  and  hopefulness  of  a 
living  God.  He  lays  a  perpetual  claim  upon  the 
invisible  humanity  of  the  larger  Life.  In  his 
desperate  case,  seemingly  diseased  in  spirit  beyond 
recovery,  with  the  horrifying  consciousness  that 
the  very  bottom  is  dropping  out  of  his  soul,  sin- 
fainting,  such  a  man  never  claims  immortality 
as  his  inalienable  right  on  the  ground  of  your 
arguments,  on  the  ground  of  your  "  entity " 
(whatever  that  may  be).  He  feels,  if  he  have  a 
single  drop  of  manhood  left  in  the  poor  sclerotic 


LIFE  EVERLASTIG  ' 

veins  of  his  soul  his  pathetic  unfitness  and  un- 
readiness for  any  eternal  place  in  the  divine  order 
of  things.  He  seems  to  know,  as  by  a  last  rem- 
nant of  the  still  unconquerable  instinct  of  man- 
hood in  him,  that  for  him  a  future  life  is  no  neces- 
sity and  indeed  no  strictly  reasonable  hope. 
Thus  with  no  preposterous  arguments  and  with 
no  cowardly  evidences  he  enters  the  great  Beyond. 
I  think  he  fronts  there  no  mechanically  redeem- 
ing God-entity,  no  silent,  eternal  and  icy-cold 
perfection,  but  just  the  eternally  patient  and 
hopeful  spirit  of  a  living  God,  the  living  and  pas- 
sionately hot  Life  of  God,  God  alive!  God  al- 
mighty !  God  all  human !  Down  with  you,  poor 
diseased  soul!  Prostrate  before  God!  God! 
God!  Then,  up  with  you,  rich  restored  soul! 
Leap  for  joy  before  God!  God!  God!  For 
there  in  the  great  Beyond,  before  your  very  soul- 
eyes  is  —  no  ghostly  company  of  dancing  enti- 
ties ;  there  is  the  army  of  God !  Be  patient,  peni- 
tent, strong  in  your  own  soul's  manhood!  And 
after  the  furlough  granted  you  by  the  great  Cap- 
tain, once  you  are  whole  and  strong  and  brave 
again,  you  too  shall  join  the  company  of  your 
peers  and  fight!  fight!  fight! 

The  gift  and  responsibility  of  eternal  Life; 
the  miracle  of  rebirth  ever  making  good  earth's 
dead  losses ;  God's  and  your  own  everlasting  com- 
bat with  sin; — that's  what  argues  immortality. 
In  this  manner  of  arguing  even  a  sinner  may  lay 
a  perpetual  claim  upon  the  patient  and  hopeful, 


102    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

•unbroken  courage  and  eternal  Life  of  God.  Ar- 
gue like  a  man  then !  Live  like  a  man  now  and 
then! 

IV 

There  is  a  certain  unheroism  in  the  doctrine  of 
the  soul's  necessary  immortality  and  ultimate  sal- 
vation. As  if,  do  what  you  may  or  please,  the 
soul  is  a  fixed  Thing  and  must  needs  gravitate 
toward  a  fixed  state  of  salvation!  Advisedly  I 
say  gravitate,  not  levitate;  for  one  would  most 
assuredly  have  to  go  down,  very  perceptibly  down 
below  the  level  of  the  world's  fair  fighting-ground 
to  be  saved  in  any  such  secure  case  as  that.  Men 
are  never  so  desperately  wounded  in  God's  battles 
that  they  want  to  go  down  to  this  soldier's  home 
kind  of  heaven.  They  may  have  to  go  there  for 
a  season  in  God's  providence  but  not  for  God's 
eternity  —  for  which  God  be  thanked !  Their 
release  from  heaven  onto  the  borderland  of  hell, 
the  firing  line  of  Life,  they  shall  have,  if  only 
they  want  it;  want  it  deep,  deep  down  in  the 
humane  souls  of  them !  After  the  horrible  gashes 
of  thy  fighting  finitude  have  in  safe  measure 
healed  over,  thou  brave  Man!  thou  shalt  fight 
again  somehow,  and  on  some  rough  field  of  being ; 
shalt  fight  again,  do  thou  but  deeply  need  and 
want  such  extension  of  thy  time  of  enlistment  in 
God's  great  invisible  army  of  choice  Noblemen! 

But  shame  upon  you,  thou  coward  soul !  to  ac- 
cept salvation  and  an  everlasting  furlough!  not 
to  win  increasing  Joy  through  the  accomplish- 


LIFE  EVERLASTING  103 

ments  of  an  heroic  life  but  to  claim  a  soldier's 
home-heaven  as  a  certified  demand  upon  a  me- 
chanically and  thoughtlessly  beneficent  deity;  or, 
it  may  be,  to  find  satisfaction  in  the  physical  acci- 
dent of  divine  birth  and  settle  down  in  princely 
splendour  and  stagnating  idleness  through  an 
eternity  with  no  sufficient  life  in  you  to  suffer 
even  ennui;  to  find  joy  in  the  unmerited  gifts 
from  a  God  of  undiscriminating  "  saving  grace  " 
rather  than  in  generous  and  undemanding  co- 
operation with  a  God  of  inexorable  righteousness 
and  unsearchable  Manhood!  Shame,  I  say. 
There  is  in  all  this  a  fatal  taint  of  unfaithful- 
ness^  unheroism,  pusillanimity!  The  heaven  it 
describes  is  in  very  truth  a  coward's  paradise! 
the  resort  of  the  world's  nerveless  degenerates ! 
In  this  world  here  and  now  we  do  not  call  such 
seekers  after  rest  heroes  or  true  princes ;  we  call 
them  tramps,  dependents,  defectives,  cowards ! 
We  try  to  be  patient  with  them,  but  we  don't 
celebrate  them.  What  to  them  is  heaven  we  call, 
more  plainly,  "  poor-houses." 

And  a  poor  house  heaven  would  be  in  such  a 
case:  a  place  where  for  very  idleness  men  would 
cultivate  in  selfish  and  unprosperous  lives  an 
abundant  harvest  of  private  and  personal  sins  for 
the  reaping  of  their  grasping  and  ungenerous 
hands.  There  is,  I  repeat,  something  unheroic 
and  debilitating  in  this  self-assured  optimism 
prevalent  just  now  among  men  of  a  certain  kind, 
—  nay,  of  a  very  uncertain,  wavering  kind,  if  the 


104    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

truth  be  told;  in  this  sense  of  personal  security; 
in  this  abuse,  I  should  call  it,  of  manhood;  this 
abuse  of  the  instruments  of  divine  love  and  jus- 
tice; in  this  obliging  of  God  to  be  patient  and 
hopeful  because,  forsooth,  his  human  instruments 
are  entities,  indestructible  and  doomed  to  be  saved. 
Have  you  ever  known  a  person  on  earth  who  not 
theoretically  but  practically  asserted  this  neces- 
sary goodness  of  his  soul?  who  here  in  this  world 
claimed  to  have  attained  that  high  level  of  in- 
violable purity  ?  who  advertised  himself  as  "  sanc- 
tified "  (as  the  theologic  phrase  has  it)?  If  so, 
you  know  what  I  mean  in  this  point.  Such  a 
sanctified  person  is  next  to  impossible;  would  he 
were  wholly  so ! 

v 

I  have  said  that  the  soul  as  an  entity  is  unreal, 
or  in  any  case  inconsiderable  "  What,  then,  is 
the  soul?  "  you  may  reasonably  ask.  I'm  afraid 
one  cannot  say  definitely;  for,  happily,  the  soul 
is  nothing  definite.  A  man's  soul  is  his  real  self, 
we  may  say.  That  leaves  you  margin  enough 
for  endless  speculations!  But  what  I  practi- 
cally mean  is  that  a  man's  genuine  soul  is  identi- 
cal with  his  relative  character,  the  fugitive  vices 
and  virtues,  the  moving  passions  and  joys  of  his 
daily  rounds  of  being;  in  short,  his  present  self. 
A  soul  not  unlike  a  stone  is  what  it  does.  Let 
the  active  qualities  of  a  stone  be  depressed  through 
constant  abrasion  by  the  hard  places  circumpress- 
ing  it  and  it  becomes  less  and  less.  Even  so  your 


LIFE  EVERLASTING  105 

soul  if  it  be  disintegrated  by  faithless,  unresist- 
ing contact  with  the  storms  and  cataracts  of  life, 
is  just  so  far  gone.  You  see  it  is  a  question  of 
resistance  and  fitness,  the  ability  to  overcome  and 
profit  by  the  world's  every  anstoss,  as  Fichte 
would  say.  Nay,  more ;  tested  naturally  the  stone 
is  more  enduring  than  a  human  soul.  Of  all  na- 
ture's products  a  spiritual  complex  —  and  that's 
what  every  living  soul  is :  not  a  simple  entity  but 
a  complex  of  vital  impulses,  passions,  instincts, 
resistances  and  attractions  —  of  all  the  creatures 
nature  has  begotten  a  spiritual  complex,  a  human 
soul,  I  say,  is  the  least  stable.  How  hardly  a 
child  of  man  grows  to  maturity  of  self -conscious- 
ness and  self-responsibility  and  how  painfully 
after  such  high  consummation  your  son  of  man 
persists  therein  the  hard-headed  criminologist  and 
alienist  are  constantly  reminding  us  in  their  re- 
ports. No ;  for  mere  brute  longevity  give  me  a 
stone!  It  is  much  steadier  than  a  man.  The 
everlasting,  lapidic  hills  are  always  celebrated  in 
contrast  with  the  vanities  of  human  lif e.  If  you 
will  seriously  consider  this  point  you  will  see  that 
the  soul  of  man  along  with  its  perfect  God,  as 
metaphysically  construed,  is  in  the  stone's  case: 
a  lapidic  soul-entity,  a  lapidic  deity ;  dull,  heavy, 
ponderous,  stiff,  stark,  staring,  stony-dead. 
They,  the  metaphysician  and  his  God,  are  dead 
and  have  therefore  gone  to  their  everlasting  rest. 
I  suppose  that  is  an  important  consideration. 
But  they  are  dead,  most  gruesomely,  palpably 


106    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

petrified.  Ask  such  a  petrified  God  for  the  bread 
of  life  and  what  can  he  give  you,  what  can  you 
expect  of  him,  save  a  stone  of  a  soul?  an  immortal 
fossil  of  a  man  ?  —  immortal,  right  enough,  but, 
as  I  have  contended,  quite  petrified,  of  frozen 
splendor ;  a  monstrous  mummy  of  a  one-time  good 
life?  a  dreadful  exhibit  of  perfect  Death? 

I  say  all  this  perhaps  a  bit  sharply  not  that 
anyone  may  be  put  to  confusion; — that  would 
be  a  sorry  spectacle ;  but  that  anyone  who 
will  see  clearly,  may  observe  what  the  soul  genu- 
inely is ;  no  considerable  entity  but  an  organism, 
quite  really  living  or  dying  in  the  process  of  be- 
ing; its  life  like  every  other  of  nature's  children 
chastened  and  lawed  by  certain  necessary  condi- 
tions of  life ;  a  life  which  is  even  now  generating 
enduring  powers,  everlasting  adaptabilities,  per- 
petual graces.  Yet  a  little  while  and  your  soul, 
thus  armed  and  fortified,  will  open  the  door  of 
death  to  enter  —  who  knows  what-then  ?  May  we 
not  in  one  deep  sense  ask,  "  Who  cares  what- 
then  ?  "  In  no  braggart  sense,  that  is ;  bragga- 
docio is  the  vice  of  a  weak  soul  and  deceives  no  one 
except  perhaps  itself.  I  mean,  "  Who  cares  what- 
then  ?  "  in  a  thoroughly  considerate  sense.  Who 
is  there  engaged  now  and  here  most  earnestly  in 
exercising  his  soul's  energies ;  in  being  to  his  full 
stature;  in  feeling  rushing  through  the  veins  of 
his  spirit  the  vast  energies  of  the  world-spirit's 
own  Life ; —  who  in  such  a  case  can  possibly  care 
what-then?  The  demands  and  joys  of  the 


LIFE  EVERLASTING  107 

this-now  are  tingling  in  every  drop  of  this  pres- 
ent energy.  It  is  no  time  for  studied  reflections 
upon  entities,  future  destinies  and  such  things ;  it 
is  a  time  to  live,  and  having  lived,  to  enter  in  ful- 
ness of  manhood,  to  enter  —  who  cares  what- 
then?  We  have  tasted  of  this-now  and  found  it 
strong,  nerve-steadying, —  ay,  splendid!  Can 
that-then  be  any  less  ? 

Life  begets  life,  life  itself  gives  assurance  of 
life.  When  Theodore  Parker  said  in  praying  to 
his  God,  "  I  am  conscious  of  my  immortality," 
his  consciousness  was  not  thrown  out  wantonly 
into  a  settled,  petrified,  certified  eternity ;  rather 
he  felt  within  him  a  living  Real,  like  molten  steel, 
a  living  soul  durable  and  changeable,  lovable  and 
livable  throughout  eternity  and  a  day.  By  its 
exuberance  of  growing  and  fitting  life  the  soul  of 
such  a  man  may  even  go  the  metaphysician  one 
better;  an  entity  exists  throughout  an  eternity 
only,  throughout  a  meagre  eternity ;  a  living  soul 
conscious  of  its  immortality  would  live  for  eter- 
nity and  then  a  day. 

VI 

Enter  the  stacks  of  some  great  library  and  ex- 
amine the  literature  on  the  soul's  origin,  function 
and  destiny.  You  will  be  amazed  to  find  a  mass 
of  works  dealing  with  the  soul's  destiny  out  of 
all  conscionable  proportion  to  the  mass  treating 
of  the  soul's  origin.  Indeed  the  latter  consider- 
ation you  will  not  meet  at  all  until  you  come  to 


108    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

the  books  of  modern  psychophysics.  In  this  con- 
cern of  the  soul  the  scholars  have  been  conjectural 
rather  than  soberly  scientific  in  their  investiga- 
tions. The  result  was  inevitable :  the  farther  they 
pushed  their  conjectures  into  the  future  the  re- 
moter their  conclusions  were  from  the  living  thing 
they  set  out  to  save.  Take  eternity  and  try  to 
mean  by  it  a  literally  endless  succession  of  years ; 
then  smatter  a  human  soul  over  all  these  years. 
What  result  do  you  get?  Precisely  the  result  of 
the  metaphysician :  a  ghastly,  petrified  ghost  of  a 
soul,  a  shade  in  very  literal  truth.  No  human 
being  can  stand  the  stain  of  eternity  all  at  once; 
one  must  have  breathing-space,  endless  time  in 
which  to  be  preparing  for  eternity.  And,  as  I 
see  it,  God  is  in  similar  case :  he,  if  he  be  human  — 
and  if  he  be  not  human,  who  cares  what-then? 
—  God,  no  more  than  we,  can  stand  the  pressure 
and  pull  of  an  eternity  all  at  once.  Our  destiny 
and  his  is  not  to  be  eternal  but  to  become  eternal, 
not  to  endure  the  perfect  agony  of  a  clearly  per- 
ceived and  eternally  unbearable  reality-all-at-once 
but  to  manfully  wrest  from  an  inchoate,  un- 
formed, potential  eternity  all  that  we  may  need 
for  the  day's  work  and  purposes;  all  that,  no 
more,  no  less ! 

Men,  as  I  have  hinted,  would  have  seen  this 
more  clearly  if  they  had  examined  the  soul  in  the 
light  of  its  origin.  For  I  must  insist  stubbornly 
that  it  did  have  an  origin  in  time.  The  soul  of 
each  of  us  here  on  this  planet  came  to  be  at  about 


LIFE  EVERLASTING  109 

the  age  of  two  years.  By  soul  I  now  most  obvi- 
ously mean  no  entity,  (if  it  be  that,  who  cares 
what-then  ?  )  but  that  living  self  I  have  spoken  of ; 
that  conscious  organism  of  self-impulses,  pas- 
sions, instincts;  that  self-possession-,  I  suppose 
one  might  say.  This  living  soul  came  to  be: 
that's  the  point.  Now,  if  you  inquire  what  it  was 
in  this  plastic  source  of  its  being,  you  will  get  a 
vivid  sense  of  what  it  ought  to  be  in  its  destiny,  its 
outcome. 

What  is  it  in  its  origin?  Well,  I  have  just  said 
that  it  is  no  ghost  of  a  soul;  no  petrified,  fixed, 
monstrous  thing,  but  an  impulsive,  spontaneous, 
limpid  soul  of  life  with  all  the  passion  and  zest 
and  growing  masterfulness  of  a  little  child.  If 
you  don't  know  what  that  is,  friend,  then  God 
pity  you !  your  case  is  hopeless.  The  thing  is,  to 
keep  your  soul  in  eternity  just  what  it  most  natu- 
rally is  in  childhood  —  full  of  life ;  replete  with 
passionate  sorrows  and  joys ;  instinct  with  action ; 
its  being's  currents  flowing  ever  deeper  and 
broader;  by  all  means  fluent,  limpid,  fresh;  mov- 
ing at  first  ripplingly  and  at  last  —  if  you  must 
grow  old  —  majestically  on  toward  God  only 
knows  what  precious  and  shoreless  ocean  of  being. 

Or  dovs  God  know  toward  what  shore?  I  hope 
not.  For  did  he  know  all  this  full  well,  did  his 
insight  cover  the  depths  of  an  infinitely  full  ocean 
of  being,  then  he  would  be  a  great,  silent,  im- 
perturbable Dead  Sea  into  which  our  little  streams 
of  a  day  are  innocently  pouring.  Rather  let  him 


110    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

be  the  great  tumbling,  thundering,  livvng  ocean- 
waves!  Rather  let  him  come  actively  and  con- 
sciously to  join  and  further  and  refresh  us  as  we 
in  our  deepest  channels  of  being  open  out  to  meet 
him ; —  in  those  broadest  and  deepest  channels,  I 
say,  where  we  are  nearest  that  silent,  shoreless 
ocean  in  which  we  and  he  live  and  move  and  have 
our  being. 

The  figure  is  imperfect  enough:  perhaps  the 
imagery  of  a  great  undercurrent  spring  of  life 
would  have  fitted  better.  But  you  will  under- 
stand me  in  any  case  to  mean  this :  ong'mallyy  and 
God  grant  forever!  your  soul  consists  in  just  this 
exuberant  meeting  of  the  natural,  necessary  con- 
ditions of  life;  in  just  this  tumbling,  romping, 
thundering,  cutting-in  to  the  world-ground !  Re- 
move that  ground  condition  of  life;  the  anstoss, 
the  shock  of  getting  born  again  and  again ;  the- 
orize away  the  powers  *that  tend  to  defeat ;  con- 
sider that  your  channel  is  eternally  established 
by  God  and  that  your  only  necessity  is  to  flow 
nicely  and  peaceably  therein  with  never  a  bit  of 
coarse-grained  evil  to  be  washed  away,  never  so 
much  as  a  speck  of  putrefaction  to  be  radically 
cleansed  away!  Why!  that  would  remove  life 
itself!  Such  a  channel  of  life  would  have  in  it 
no  slightest  smack  of  reality  from  its  source  to 
its  mouth ! 

I  can  see  the  soul's  case  in  no  other  light.  A 
real  soul  is  no  ghost  of  a  thing  that  I  can  imag- 
ine. It  is  a  thing  in  its  destiny  true  to  its  ori- 


LIFE  EVERLASTING  111 

gin,  not  seeking  to  destroy  its  life's  impulses, 
passions  and  instincts  but  aiming  to  compress 
these  into  ever  better  order ;  to  channel  them  more 
and  more  deeply,  letting  them  grow  strong,  noble, 
virile,  even  as  God,  the  universal  Life,  the  world's 
soul,  is  growing  stronger,,  viriler,  nobler  with  the 
on-rolling,  in-cutting  centuries. 

O!  of*  course  your  incurable  rationalist  will 
pounce  upon  and  riddle  all  this  beyond  all  human 
recognition.  He  will  make  my  words  to  mean 
that  when  I  really  mean  this.  You  can  depend 
upon  it  he  will  not  understand  either  me  or  my 
words.  His  case  is  as  hopeless  as  —  my  own! 
Still  I  must  attempt  one  more  statement  of  this 
thing  I  do  most  solemnly  hold  for  true:  a  living 
God  in  his  becoming  perfection  is  no  eternal  and 
compulsory,  no  instantaneous  and  spectrally  con- 
scious entity  of  goodness ;  but  a  persuasive  and 
tender,  spontaneous  and  youthful,  yet  solemn  and 
commanding  spirit  of  Life  —  himself  living  or 
dying  daily  in  the  growth  or  decay  of  the  souls 
of  us,  his  human  kind.  In  us  he  came  to  be, 
through  us  he  remains  to  be  seen,  in  us  it  doth 
not  yet  appear  what  he  shall  be.  We  through 
him  and  he  through  us  are  eternal, —  provided  we 
and  he  meet  the  condition  of  life !  provided  we  and 
hey-overcome !  provided  we  and  he  do  continuously 
master  the  great  universe's  anstoss,  do  meet  mas- 
terfully the  great  world's  every  shock  of  disas- 
ter, defeat,  sorrow  and  disgrace !  provided  we  and 
he  do  gain  the  victory !  In  any  other  case  what- 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

soever,  we  and  he,  being  perishable  in  our  origin, 
will  surely  die  the  death,  will  surely  subside  into 
the  great,  the  very  amorphous,  the  very  cosmic, 
formless  Beast  whence  we  and  he  arose.  And 
what-then  ?  —  the  unutterable  Silence  and  Fatu- 
ity of  a  metaphysical  eternity  will  set  in.  Much 
thus  depends  upon  you,  my  comrade,  and  much 
upon  you,  my  Comrade ! 

vn 

There  was  a  game  we  used  to  play,  as  chil- 
dren. It  was  called  the  "  wishing-game."  It 
was  a  zestful,  royal,  lively  game,  perennially 
stimulating  and  gratifying.  To  play  it  we  re- 
quired only  a  "  fairy."  Thereby  we  were  per- 
mitted to  make  wishes  —  not  one  "  stingy  "  wish 
merely  but  as  many  as  we  wished.  I  seem  to  re- 
member however  that  the  game  was  conditioned 
and  somewhat  solemnized  at  one  point:  we  must 
always  wish  for  something  noble,  of  high  degree ; 
we  must  want  to  be  great  Kings  or  Queens,  great 
leaders  of  men  in  all  ways  of  simplicity,  found- 
ers of  happy  families,  defenders  of  homes,  and 
anything  else  that  was  good  and  great  and  holy. 
In  these  circumstances  the  wishes  were  supposed 
to  "  come  true." 

Well,  we  used  to  play  thus,  as  children.  Even 
now  I  play  the  game  sometimes  with  two  little 
children  of  my  own  heart; — even  now  some- 
times, when  alone,  with  the  great  God  of  my 
heart!  Wish  for  what  you  want,  now  or  here- 


LIFE  EVERLASTING  113 

after,  of  all  that  is  noble,  vital,  princely,  manly ! 
And  somehow  out  from  the  invisible,  fairlylike 
being  of  God's  own  great  and  noble  humanity  it 
will  come  true  now  or  hereafter!  That's  the 
game. 

As  children,  we  did  believe  in  the  fairy  of  our 
imaginary  game.  As  grown-ups  do  we,  dare  we, 
believe  in  the  God  of  our  Game  of  Life?  the 
great  God  of  our  spiritual  imagination?  the 
mysterious  Presence  round  about  us  ready  for 
every  motion  of  our  human  lives?  a  Presence 
whose  whole  soul  is  presented  for  the  asking? 
Dare  we  believe  in  him?  I  ask.  In  manhood's 
Fairy  God? 

It  is  a  simple  question  to  ask :  "  Do  you  believe 
in  God?  "  Men  of  modern  mind,  as  I  have  so 
often  remarked,  are  apt  to  reply :  "  Why,  of 
course ;  certainly  I  believe  in  God."  But  I  don't 
mean  that.  Any  fool  can  believe  in  the  God 
you  are  thinking  of  when  you  say  that.  "  Why 
of  course  I  believe  in  God ; "  as  much  as  to  say 
"  Why  of  course  the  sun  will  rise  to-morrow : 
but  what  time  of  day  is  it  now,  you  condemned 
man?  " 

Once  more:  Do  you  belive  in  God?  in  him  not 
at  all  as  a  matter  of  course  but  in  him  in  a 
practical,  playful,  childish  way  ?  Do  you  believe 
in  him  thus  even  though  men  before  they  really 
know  the  awful  depth  of  what  you  mean  will  spit 
scorn  in  the  face  of  your  passionate  utterance, 
reviling  you  in  your  very  personal  and  very  con- 


114    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

fidential  experience  of  him  you  call  God-Man, 
calling  you  all  manner  of  galling  and  patronizing 
names,  ridiculing  you  as  a  new  and  latest  brand 
of  passionate  egotist,  a  sort  of  harmless,  spir- 
itual libertine?  Do  you  believe  that  God-Man 
is  ?  —  is,  I  say,  right  here,  right  now,  right  pres- 
ent, right  human? 

Well,  I  imagine,  you  are  not  quite  so  sure  of 
that.  But  so  surely  as  you  do  not  believe  just 
that,  just  exactly  that,  no  less,  you  do  not  fully 
experience  God.  You  are  bowing  and  scraping 
before  a  great  monstrous  world-idol; — a  con- 
venient idol,  too ;  for  he  can't  enter  your  count- 
ing-house and  your  home  to  shame  your  very  in- 
tolerable practices  there.  Well,  that  world-idol 
will  grind  you  to  pieces  in  the  end.  He  is  a  God- 
of-course,  a  Brute-Energy,  no  more  eternal  by 
nature  nor  by  natural  right  than  a  Beast-of- 
course  grunting  and  puffing  in  his  universal  wal- 
low! He  will  grind  you  back  into  star-dust,  I 
tell  you!  That  is  his  destiny  and  yours,  too, 
along  with  him.  Just  so  surely  and  relentlessly 
as  Fate,  your  God-of-course  is  dying,  disin- 
tegrating, being  abolished,  returning  to  the 
pompous,  stiff,  petrified,  dead  inanity  he  set  out 
from !  Go  along  with  him,  if  you  will :  you  be- 
lieve in  him  of  course! 

But  the  better  course,  the  better  way,  as  I  see 
it,  would  be  to  conjoin  your  energies,  your  man- 
hoods, with  the  more  romantic,  fairy-like,  ex- 
uberantly childlike  Energy  I  now  and  henceforth 


LIFE  EVERLASTING  115 

call  God, —  not  your  God-of-course  but  an  in- 
visible God  whom  it  requires  vision  to  see  and  a 
mighty  will  to  follow;  a  Reality-of-God  not  so 
obvious  as  your  God-of-course  but  a  Life  ever 
pressing  on  toward  mastery  and  invisible  being 
just  as  surely  and  steadily  as  Matter,  the  king- 
dom of  your  beastly  God-of-course,  is  sinking 
toward  death  and  destruction.  Lend  your  life  to 
the  larger  Life,  engage  yourself  to  that  in  a 
precious  eternal  alliance  —  and  live  forever,  for- 
ever! That  is  the  argument,  that  the  condition, 
that  the  Life. 

Is  it  not  good  to  live?  to  live  now  and  then? 

vm 

In  this  spirit  one  may  honorably  enter  what  is 
called  "  life  after  death  " —  in  this  life-after-life 
spirit.  "  What  shall  we  be  like  <  over  there '?  " 
you  ask.  I  make  answer:  we  shall  be  like  him 
then  if  we  are  like  him  now;  for  we  shall  see 
him  as  he  is.  "  Who  is  this  great '  I  am  '?  "  you 
ask.  He  is  the  God  of  the  veiled  Face,  the  God 
of  the  veiled  Manhood.  Unveiled,  "  over  there  " 
I  hope:  but  veiled  from  us  over  here, —  hidden 
from  us  by  all  our  sensualities,  stupidities, 
bestialities.  But  even  now  you  may  see  his  great 
patient,  care-worn,  brave  Face,  if  you  will  but 
unveil  yourself;  your  everlasting  pure  and  holy 
self;  your  soul  girt  for  life's  and  eternity's  bat- 
tles !  just  your  own  homely,  splendid,  everlasting 
self  i  —  just  that  is  the  God  of  the  unveiled,  un- 


116   RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

searchable  human  face, —  the  Face  of  human  life, 
the  Face  of  the  universe's  Manhood,  Man-God, 
God-Man. 

Is  it  good  to  live,  to  live  now  and  then?  Then 
unveil,  O  Man !  Unveil,  O  God !  to  live  forever ! 
f orevermore !  forever  and  a  day! 


IV 

PRAYER  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

i 

Most  men  in  these  latter  days  have,  as  they 
put  the  case,  broken  themselves  of  the  childish 
habit  of  prayer  and  have  now  ceased  to  feel  its 
magical  strength  in  their  lives.  Freed  from  the 
errors  and  dogmatism  of  their  fathers'  faith  men 
of  the  modern  mind  don't  like  to  pray  any  more : 
somehow  it  is  so  childlike,  so  primitive,  so  useless, 
this  customary  praying.  It  is  now  past  believing 
in. 

Does  this  modern  man  then  disbelieve,  say,  in 
God  ?  By  no  means.  He  believes  in  God  wholly : 
somehow  a  great  energy  is  working  its  way  out 
in  the  lives  of  men.  Only  a  fool  can  say  in  his 
mind  "  There  is  no  God."  God  is  phenomenal, 
apparent  enough.  But  as  to  praying!  Who 
can  by  that  alter  one  least  movement,  one  slight- 
est law  or  purpose  of  the  Great  God  of  things 
as  they  have  got  to  be? 

Perhaps  some  of  you,  my  comrades  of  the 
open  mind,  will  recall,  as  do  I,  the  very  night 
when  the  communing  impulse  called  prayer  began 
to  decrease  within  you;  when  the  Presence,  the 
mythic  Companion  of  your  child-  and  young 
man-hood,  began  slipping  away  from  your  inner 
hearth-stone.  Ah!  but  that  was  a  sorry  night, 
117 


118    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

the  night  when,  no  longer  able  to  open  your 
grown  life  sincerely  and  whole-souledly  to  the 
larger  Life,  you  for  the  first  time  sought  sleep 
in  the  awful  solitude  of  a  prayerless  soul.  But: 
"  Oh,  well "  you  say,  "  that  is  all  over,  best  for- 
gotten now.  Since  that  dreadful  night  I  seem 
to  have  fared  pretty  well  as  things  go  in  this 
godless  world.  My  life  has  become  more  and 
more  self-sufficient,  less  and  less  conscious  of 
any  dependence  upon  another  Power  than  my- 
self. The  meaning  and  spirit  of  prayer  once  the 
source,  I  grant,  of  my  daily  strength  and  cour- 
age —  it  somehow  no  longer  sinks  deep  into  my 
soul.  Yes,  I  fare  well  enough  as  things  go.  I 
am  no  coward,  no  sniffler,  I  am  a  Man, —  godless 
to  be  sure  but  a  Man  nonetheless." 

A  prayerless,  modern  society ;  men  with  heroic 
souls  bereaved  of  God;  all  private  approaches  to 
the  great  Father-spirit  cut  off  by  doubt  and 
hesitation ;  the  soul  of  God  dehumanized,  cast  out 
from  the  habitations  of  men ;  great  God !  a 
stranger  in  the  world,  finding  never  a  simple  and 
natural  response  to  the  call  of  his  father-spirit 
in  the  hearts  of  his  children, —  for  we  are  yet  his 
children  ingrainedly,  bone  of  his  bone,  flesh  of  his 
flesh,  soul  of  his  soul.  Men  in  their  boasted 
knowledge  of  Nature's  unchanging  laws  have 
turned  their  faces  away  from  the  World-Father. 
Just  last  night  I  was  reading  a  letter  from  a 
friend  of  polytechnic  education  in  which  he  tells 
me  that  once  when  things  were  going  very  ill  with 


PRAYER  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND       119 

him  he  was  constrained  to  "  swear  at "  this  ac- 
cursed God  of  physics.  This  man's  science  had 
erected  in  the  place  of  a  once  living  and  friendly 
God  a  monstrous  deaf  and  dumb  idol  of  things 
as  they  have  got  to  be.  It  is  even  so;  the  ex- 
perience of  a  living  God  is  gone  in  these  days 
of  superior  knowledge  and  of  desolating  doubt. 
Perhaps  never  to  return? 

Here  is  what  William  James  says  on  the  point: 
"  Few  men  of  science  can  pray,  I  imagine. 
Few  can  carry  on  any  living  commerce  with 
'  God.'  Yet  many  of  us  are  well  aware  how  much 
freer  in  many  directions  and  abler  our  lives  would 
be,  were  such  important  forms  of  energizing  not 
sealed  up." 

n 

"  Were  such  important  forms  of  energizing 
not  sealed  up " !  Most  of  my  readers  will  be 
familiar  with  the  impediment  of  science  whereby 
these  great  springs  of  human  energy  have  been 
dammed  up  and  prevented  from  flowing  in  their 
natural  course  with  the  deeper  currents  of  being. 
This  modern  scepticism  of  prayer  is  very  unlike 
the  scepticism  of  a  generation  or  so  ago.  That 
doubted  the  very  existence  of  God:  this  on  the 
contrary  owrbelieves  in  him!  The  modern  mind 
believes  in  God  tremendously!  Is  his  great 
being  not  obvious  on  all  sides,  the  Great  God  of 
the  countless  stars?  Something  like  sixty  billion 
of  them,  we  are  told,  are  subject  to  this  God- 
Power.  His  energy  is  present  in  the  world  with 


120    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

terrific  intensity:  release  it,  if  only  you  could, 
from  its  potential  imprisonment  in  a  single  drop 
of  water  and,  once  more  we  are  told,  you  could 
move  by  this  released  power  all  the  machinery 
of  all  the  workshops  over  the  civilized  world. 
Great  is  God!  Great  and  monstrous  withal! 
"  Surely "  this  late  septicism  of  prayer  argues 
"  a  God  of  such  prowess  and  majesty  is  con- 
cerned chiefly  in  the  machinizmg  of  his  in- 
finite workshop,  in  fitting  with  stars  the  endless 
expanse  of  the  heavens.  Chiefly  in  that  rather 
than  in  the  conserving  and  cherishing  of  human 
things  like  you  and  me."  God  only  knows  how 
many  men  in  these  days  have  caught  this  vision 
of  his  awful  power,  majesty  and  dignity.  But 
I  think  there  are  many  who  have  said  in  their 
hearts  "  Oh,  God,  we  acknowledge  thee,  spirit  of 
the  great  world  and  its  heavens.  Great  is  thy 
power,  thy  majesty  how  surpassing  all  our  human 
measurements  and  imaginations !  Great  thou  art 
beyond  all  the  childish  beliefs  of  our  fathers.  In 
the  rumbling  and  inexorable  rush  of  thy  matchless 
world-work  thou  canst  not  hear  nor,  hearing, 
heed  the  feeble  petitions  rising  from  human  lips. 
How  small  indeed  is  this  human,  whirling  planet 
among  thy  sixty  odd  billion  of  such." 

Yes;  men  in  these  days  believe  terrifically  in 
God,  acknowledge  their  hopeless  dependence  upon 
him,  revere  him  in  his  surpassing  power,  worship 
his  majesty.  But  they  have  dumbed  in  conse- 


PRAYER  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND       121 

quence  the  great,  infinite  heart  of  tenderness  and 
love  they  once  imaged  in  God.  They  can  no 
longer  utter  the  child's  cry  for  help,  the  simple 
prayer  out  of  a  child's  daily  needs  and  trials, 
errors  and  sins.  We  sink  our  souls  in  the  great 
on-pushing  energy  round  about  us.  We  hush  all 
our  human  longings  for  divine  companionship 
and  stand  silent  and  lonely  under  the  star-strewn 
heavens;  looking  up  in  the  attitude  of  prayer, 
it  may  be,  but  with  lips  stiffened  and  struck 
dumb  by  the  vision  of  power  and  dignity  there 
above  our  heads.  Even  so,  in  time  we  forget 
altogether  that  hour  of  evening  devotion  in 
which,  as  children,  we  were  able  to  pray  to  God, 
simply  and  freely  touching  the  things,  the  mis- 
takes, disappointments,  passions,  sins,  of  the  day 
just  gone  by;  praying  with  a  full  sense  of  God's 
Presence;  nothing  doubting,  for  was  the  Pres- 
ence not  there,  understanding,  strengthening,  for- 
giving, companioning?  Yes,  he  seemed  to  be 
there  then,  but  not  now.  Now,  the  great  Father- 
Spirit  is  dead !  The  great  Father-Spirit  is  dead, 
I  tell  you.  Men  and  women,  great  pathetic 
hordes  of  them  are  standing  in  the  world  hope- 
less, powerless,  prayerless,  dumb,  like  sheep  for- 
saken of  their  shepherd,  mere  beasts  in  the  fields 
of  God's  world. 

And  the  proof  of  all  this  is  at  hand,  is  easily 
found  out.  It  needs  but  a  simple  question. 
How  many  of  you,  comrades  of  the  modern 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

mind,  have  prayed  in  the  day,  or  in  the  year,  or 
in  what  time  soever,  just  gone  by?  Not  many  of 
you  in  these  latter  days,  I  think. 

ra 

It  would  be  very  easy  to  refute  men's  argu- 
ments against  prayer;  it  is  in  fact  a  pathetic 
fallacy  that  has  led  them  to  doubt  God  because  of 
the  very  power  and  being  which  alone  would  jus- 
tify faith  in  him.  What  boots  your  childish 
belief  in  God's  goodness,  sympathy,  love  and  all 
else  human,  unless  God  be  indeed?  unless  his 
being  be  in  very  truth  just  what  your  adult 
science  makes  it  out  to  be:  world-wide,  ever- 
present,  mindful?  Surely  God's  bigness  does  not 
prevent  his  goodness  and  love?  We  would  not 
judge  a  dog  in  that  way.  It  often  happens  that 
the  larger  your  dog  is,  the  more  watchful  and 
affectionate  is  he  toward  those  he  holds  in  his  care. 
Can  it  be  then  that  this  God  who  grips  in  his 
care  the  very  dead  planets,  whose  substance  holds 
and  feels  the  fall  of  the  tiniest,  fluttering  sparrow, 
is  unmindful,  un watchful  of  you  and  me?  of  you 
and  me  who  best  of  all  the  creatures  of  his  world 
can  enter  into  and  become  a  living  part  of  his  di- 
vine life?  Surely  this  is  the  position  of  those  who 
have  never  actively  entered  the  larger  Life,  who 
have  never  worked  with  God  in  his  world,  who  do 
not  know  God  in  the  way  of  practice,  in  the  way 
of  life.  This  thing  is,  not  to  demonstrate  God: 
that  is  easy  enough!  but  to  prove  him;  not  to 


PRAYER  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      123 

qualify  God  ponderously  but  to  live  him  joy- 
ously; not  to  chart  him  as  he  moves  in  the  dis- 
tant heavens  but  to  speak  him  friendlily  as  he 
passes  in  your  way  of  life. 

IV 

Anyway,  argument  is  futile  in  all  such  vital 
cases.  Let  the  logicians  and  metaphysicians 
wrangle  with  the  scientist  over  this  matter  of 
praying.  My  purpose  is  otherwise.  It  is 
merely  to  impress  a  fact  upon  you,  friend,  in 
case  you  have  come  to  this  modern  mind's  prayer- 
less  belief  in  God:  the  man  who  knows  God  only 
as  external  prowess  does  not  really  know  him. 
You  would  know  God,  as  he  genuinely  and 
really  is,  or  perhaps  ought  to  be?  as  you  want 
him  to  be?  as  you  hope  he  is  in  that  unseen  soul 
of  him  beneath  all  his  visible,  earthly  and  heav- 
enly powers?  Then  you  must  mythologize  and 
humanize  God!  You  must  feel  the  great  in- 
visible powers  of  the  universe  concentrated  upon 
and  in  you,  God  connected  in  some  most  vital  and 
inward  way  with  the  daily  deeds  and  nightly 
aspirations  of  your  human  life.  All  argument 
aside  then!  The  simple  fact  is  that  no  man  can 
put  away  from  himself  this  in  some  sort  childlike 
sense  of  a  God's  friendly  presence  in  his  own 
working  life  without  losing  in  time  his  very  be- 
lief in  God.  On  this  we  must  be  clear:  an  ex- 
ternal, prayerless  thought  of  God,  though  it  be 
in  fact  never  so  knowing,  is  unutterably  inferior 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

to  a  practical,  prayerful,  mystic  belief  in  him. 
It  is  an  amazing  phenomenon  in  human  history, 
the  attempt  of  metaphysic  and  theologic  science 
to  keep  alive  in  the  great  ocean  of  being  a  God 
around  whose  soul  they  have  hung  like  mill-stones 
all  their  weighty  arguments  and  ponderous  in- 
finitudes. The  mythologists,  as  I  have  hinted, 
the  humanists,  the  religionists  of  humanity,  have 
shown  a  superior  instinct  in  their  experience  of 
God  as  Man,  or  of  Man  as  God  (whichever  you 
prefer).  In  any  case  they  have  preserved  the 
God  of  real  human  life;  a  God  who  lives  and 
loves  in  the  region  of  human  being;  in  whom  his 
awful  infinitudes,  omniscience,  omnipotence,  om- 
nipresence and  such,  are  not  methaphysic  but 
practical,  not  even  infinite  if  by  that  you  mean 
done,  but  rather  finite  and  active,  once  more,  in 
the  habitations  and  souls  of  men;  human,  in 
short. 

v 

After  all  these  wise  old  metaphysicians  and 
doctors  of  sacred  theology  are  not  really  expert 
in  divinity.  Those  rather  are  expert,  as  I  take 
it,  who  have  discovered  God  to  men,  who  in  some 
very  real  sense  have  actually  seen  God  face  to 
face,  as  Man  to  man,  as  Friend  to  friend. 

In  a  word  those  know  God  most  immediately 
and  intimately  who  in  saintliless  or  in  sinfulness 
have  tapped  the  very  sources  of  his  living  being. 
All  other  knowledge  of  That  we  call  God  is 


PRAYER  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND     125 

mediate  and  inferential.  In  truth  divinity  is  not 
so  much  a  matter  of  knowledge  as  of  friendship: 
we  infer  the  friendliness  of  our  life's  closest  com- 
panion, say,  the  fatherliness  of  our  father,  from 
external  marks  and  gifts,  until  that  solemn 
moment  when  through  some  act  of  unwonted 
faithfulness  or  unfaithfulness  on  our  part  we 
come  to  feel  overwhelmingly  the  eternal  spirit 
of  love  out  of  which  through  the  years  all  these 
gifts  and  expressions  of  love  have  poured  forth. 
Then  do  we  really  know,  and  yet  not  rightly 
know  but  rather  sense,  the  deeps  of  our  friend, 
our  father.  It  is  so  with  scientific  and  theologic 
knowledge  of  God:  it  is  in  the  main  external, 
inferential,  doctoral.  There  is  a  plenty  of 
scientists  and  philosophers  who  live  in  an  out- 
wardly friendly  relation  with  the  universal  energy 
or  spirit  they  condescend  to  call  God :  such  a  God 
is  universely  prolific!  a  splendid  provider!  full 
of  rich  gifts,  unconsciously  bestowed!  But  this 
external  friendship  with  God  becomes  internal 
and  remains  an  eternal  demand  in  that  soul  only 
which,  having  completed  its  world-wide  account 
of  God's  powers  and  beneficences,  has  at  last  re- 
ceived this  world-wide  spirit  of  God  within  the 
sacred  precincts  of  its  own  most  intimate  hopes 
and  longings  and  aspirations.  I  have  known  a 
few  such  scientific  and  yet  intimate  commun- 
icants with  God :  one  of  them  loves  a  little  child ; 
another  grieves  for  a  life  removed  by  sudden  and 


126    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

tragic  death  from  his  hearth-stone;  another  met 
God  when  on  his  way  with  his  once  brilliant  son 
to  a  neighboring  mad-house. 

The  God  of  the  hearth-stone,  God  of  the 
world-home!  He  is  God  indeed;  the  inward 
source  of  all  human  patience,  hopefulness,  love, 
righteousness,  the  exhaustless  soul  of  all  human 
courage  and  wisdom.  The  God  who  cares! 
whose  manna-machine  does,  it  is  true,  incessantly 
pour  down  food  for  the  body  from  the  heavens 
above  —  infer  God  from  that,  you  men  of  know- 
ing temper!  but  whose  soul  of  humanity  is  pour- 
ing forth  here  in  the  homes  of  men  such  gifts  to 
the  soul  as  courage,  hardihood,  tenderness,  Man- 
hood—  become  God  in  that,  you  men  of  mystic 
temper ! 

The  God  who  cares!  He  it  is  who  may  and 
must  be  prayed  to. 

May  be  prayed  to,  for  he  is  above  all  else  a 
humane  spirit,  is  God.  His  world-soul  may  thus 
touch  ours,  his  life  enter  into  and  renew  ours, 
his  purposes  become  one  and  whole  in  ours,  his 
Life  live  in  ours.  Place  your  human  against 
his  human,  interfuse  your  life  with  his;  share 
with  him  your  shame  and  your  sin,  your  strength 
and  your  joy,  your  goods  and  your  evil;  speak 
him  friendlily  as  his  great  world-spirit  passes 
your  way,  I  say.  Pray !  And,  see,  your  God  al- 
mighty, your  inferential  infinitudes,  will  become 
a  living,  friendly  reality.  Henceforth  the  blow 
that  falls  on  you  falls  on  him  equally;  the  sin 


PRAYER  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND     127 

that  debases  you  ruins  him  equally;  the  good 
cheer,  courage,  manliness,  self-expression  and 
self-offering  that  enter  and  dignify  your  life 
enter  equally  his  and  further  his  own  eternal 
Man-impulses  and  Man-passions.  In  you!  I  say, 
—  do  I  perhaps  say  it  too  often  and  too  simply  ? 
for  men  think  you  can't  talk  of  God  other  than 
ponderously  and  pompously  —  nay,  in  you  God 
becomes;  in  that  great  humanity  that  sometimes 
shrieks  out  in  the  night  with  the  very  agony  of 
its  infinite  pain  in  growing,  in  that  Man  beyond 
yourself,  the  great  God  lives  and  moves  and  has 
his  being.  To  this  Man-God,  though  to  none 
other,  a  man  may  pray. 

And  must  pray  too.  See  how  intimately  per- 
sonal, mutual,  reciprocal,  social,  friendly  this 
relation  of  God  with  man  is !  So  intimate  is  it 
that  somehow  spirit  must  make  known  to  spirit 
the  needs  and  demands  and  aspirations  of  each. 
Communing  of  spirit  with  spirit  —  and  that  is 
praying  essentially  and  inwardly  —  cannot  be 
one-sided.  There  would  be  no  touch,  no  feeling, 
no  understanding,  in  that.  I  know  of  no  more 
presposterous  theory  of  prayer  than  that  which 
affirms  that  God  knows  our  needs  in  an  eternity 
before  ever  we  felt  the  same.  Preposterous, 
theoretic  rww-sense!  Why,  my  friend,  those 
needs  didn't  even  exist,  they  most  certainly  were 
not,  until  you  felt  them.  Once  I  read  an  ac- 
count of  an  old  woman,  a  senile  dement,  who 
spent  her  last  days  ministering  to  the  imaginary 


128    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

wants  of  a  senseless,  stuffed  doll.  She  was  not 
unlike  your  God,  and  you  not  unlike  the  limp, 
dumb  lump  of  a  doll,  my  friend,  if  you  press 
your  theory  of  prayer  too  far!  Nay,  God  in 
his  world-old  life  is  still  young  and  spontaneous 
in  his  inner  springs ;  he  in  his  exuberant  Life 
"rejoices  as  a  strong  Man  to  run  a  race";  he 
is  still  growing  in  humanity,  is  still  in  intelligent 
contact  with  your  human  life.  The  relation  be- 
tween him  and  you  is  a  live  articulate  matter. 
When  you  stir  he  stirs ;  when  you  want,  he  wants ; 
when  you  cry,  he  pauses  in  his  busy  way;  when 
you  open  the  flood  gates  of  your  soul  his  in- 
fluence does  most  actively  come.  All  this  when 
you  pray,  when  you  become  in  some  way  articu- 
late before  God;  but  not  sooner,  I  think.  God 
must  and  may  be  prayed  to;  spirit  answering 
spirit,  that  is  prayer. 

Let  us  agree  upon  any  explanation  you  will 
of  this  contact  between  our  human  and  God's 
human  spirit.  Call  it  supersensible,  telepathic, 
subconscious,  or  by  what  term  soever  you  choose. 
Such  terms  do  explain  in  the  right  direction: 
silent,  wordless  prayer  is  more  efficient  than 
prayers  from  the  mouth.  Only  don't  confuse 
the  principle  of  communion.  Round  about  and 
within  each  of  us  is  a  great,  indubitable,  in- 
domitable Soul,  a  consciously,  humanly  sensitive 
Spirit,  conserving  us  with  all  its  might,  guiding 
us  with  all  its  power,  speaking  our  spirits  with 
the  infinite  tenderness  and  pathos  of  its  own 


PRAYER  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND       129 

soul  of  triumphing  righteousness.  And  there 
is  only  one  way  in  which  the  human  soul  may 
inwardly  acknowledge  and  know  that  sustaining 
power,  consciously  follow  that  friendly  leader- 
ship, inwardly  hear  the  divine  call:  the  way  of 
wordless  prayer.  Wordless  but  not  senseless, 
wordless  but  not  inarticulate  is  this  prayer  of 
the  full,  human  life.  In  his  quiet  hours  of 
praying  thus  the  devout  man's  soul  is  infinitely 
expressive:  he  lays  bare  before  the  humane  soul 
of  God,  as  he  cannot  before  any  other  living 
soul,  the  eternal  wants  of  his  spirit  and  feels  a 
Presence  passing  that  way  strengthening,  com- 
forting, reassuring;  persuading  him  that  these 
eternal  needs,  these  untiring  aspirations  of  his 
human  soul  are  infinite,  living  passions  in  the 
very  soul  of  God.  He  and  God  move  together 
in  prayer;  in  prayer  he  and  God  face  together 
the  eternal  way. 

Don't  say  then  that  a  man  must  not  pray  over 
his  daily  needs,  trials  and  errors  and  sins ;  for 
whatsoever  things  concern  a  man  infinitely  con- 
cern the  God-Man  infinitely,  too.  We  stand 
facing  a  world  in  which  our  knowledge  is  per- 
verted by  brute-facts,  our  lives  are  altered  and 
cultivated  in  time  by  the  changing  seasons  of 
a  world's  progress.  We  grow  and  are  infinite, 
are  majestic,  only  in  that  progress,  in  that  push- 
ing-forth  into  being,  in  that  entering  into  an 
unformed  and  unknown  eternity.  But  the  spirit 
of  God  moves  and  grows  infinite  and  majestic 


130    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

in  that  same  world  and  in  that  same  way  of  prog- 
ress: his  spirit  knows  no  more  than  the  great 
world  as  it  now  is  and  is  becoming,  the  great 
infinitely  possible  world  of  real  life. 

And  so  the  prayer  that  asks  for  more  life, 
more  light,  more  strength  is  to  the  very  soul  of 
God  the  signal  of  life,  the  motion  of  a  new 
birth  of  spirit  within  his  Life,  the  opening  of  a 
new  soul  to  the  unending  possibilities  of  becom- 
ing alive.  We  men  must  cease  to  pray  for 
trifles  as  if  they  were  the  eternal  verities  of  life ; 
we  must  consider  more  and  more  what  are  life's 
lasting  dignities ;  we  must  yield  graciously  to  the 
life  and  wisdom  of  a  Great  Spirit  surrounding 
us,  the  loving  Leader  of  our  lives ;  we  must  learn 
to  labor  with  this  larger  Life,  to  practice  the 
Presence  of  the  Man  in  us,  the  God  in  him; 
we  must  believe  in  the  answering  love  and  wis- 
dom of  the  Whole.  Then  after  this  great  dis- 
cipline of  soul  a  grown  man  like  you  and  me 
here  may  pray  to  the  Spirit  of  God,  each  saying 
in  the  silence  of  his  soul  "  I  cannot  live,  I  can- 
not be,  I  cannot  work  without  this  gift  of  thy 
love  and  life.  More  Light!  more  Life!  more 
Love !  "  And  the  answer  will  come  in  your  life ; 
somehow  all  the  conditions  of  life  will  become 
gracious  and  blessed  and  strong;  one's  soul  of 
prayer  will  have  come  to  know  on  earth  some- 
thing of  the  eternal  joy  of  the  spirit's  own  in- 
visible world-home  —  out  there  and  in  here,  be- 
yond and  beneath  all  the  conditions  of  beastly 


PRAYER  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      131 

time  and  beastly  space.  This  is  the  principle 
of  prayer:  the  retirement  of  the  human  into  the 
divine  spirit,  the  human  into  the  divine  Life; 
the  call  of  the  undisciplined  soul  of  a  man  to  the 
disciplined  yet  like  soul  of  God. 

Really  to  see,  really  to  yield  to  this  living 
argument  of  a  larger  yet  like-minded  Life,  to  be 
unafraid  of  its  Presence,  to  be  unashamed  to  call 
it  "  God  "  and  to  stand  nobly  in  his  Light,  to  be 
frankly  mystic,  to  pray  simply  yet  in  the 
strength  of  your  grown-up  manhood  —  that  is 
your  supremest  vocation,  O  Man !  "  What  is  God 
that  thou  are  mindful  of  him?  "  you  ask.  God, 
believe  me,  is  infinitely  more  than  all-mighty,  in- 
finitely more  than  all-wise,  infinitely  more  than 
in-himself ',  infinitely  more  than  what  qualities 
soever  your  tedious  and  monstrous  science  of  God 
may  picture  him  to  be.  God  is  not  divme  —  not 
in  his  right  arm  of  avenging  power  nor  yet  in 
his  perfect  mind  of  fatal  knowledge.  God  is  di- 
vine—  in  that  very  heart  and  centre  of  him,  in 
those  unconditioned  affections  where  even  he,  as 
God  is!  is  dependent  upon  you  and  me,  upon 
our  love  and  faithfulness  and  strong  manhood, 
upon  our  working  with  him  in  his  great  enter- 
prises of  love  in  the  world,  laboring  with  him  in 
his  world-wide  vineyard,  home-making  with  him 
in  his  great  world-home.  No!  God  is  no  chief 
artificer  —  not  that  chiefly,  I  mean;  he  is  no 
wise  One  merely,  seeing  all  clearly  and  ordering 
all  fatally.  God  is  a  presence  of  humanity,  a 


132    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

spirit  of  human  strength  and  humane  love  like 
you  and  me,  living  under  all  the  conditions  of 
human  trial  and  affection ;  unlike  us  only  in  this : 
in  his  age-long,  storm-centered  Life  he  has  even 
now  gained  unspeakably  in  patience,  in  courage, 
in  hopefulness  and  in  all  those  splendid  infinities 
you  and  I  are  staggering  and  working  toward. 
It  is  only  in  the  opening  out  in  prayer  of  our 
human  hearts  in  that  way  that  his  spirit  and  Life 
of  divine  bravery  and  love  can  enter  and  chasten, 
strengthen,  stir,  comfort  and  protect  our  littler 
lives. 

VI 

This  is  the  method  and  spirit,  you  will  find, 
of  those  who  have  seen  God,  the  saints  and  sin- 
ners who  have  found*  him  in  life's  ways. 

As  to  the  saints.  Spending  their  lives  from 
beginning  to  end  in  simple  trustfulness,  finding 
God's  face  as  familiar  as  the  stars,  his  Presence 
as  certain  as  the  everlasting  hills,  these  passion- 
ately faithful  men  spend  their  days  in  a  kind  of 
perpetual  communion  with  God;  they  fail  not 
for  a  moment  to  rest  confidingly  in  the  larger 
Life;  they  always  feel  around  about  and  within 
their  human  lives  the  very  spirit  and  presence  of 
a  living  God.  How  they  prize  the  friendly  walk 
with  God,  this  constant  turning  and  looking  to 
the  Eternal  for  strength  and  guidance !  Well,  it 
i*  a  very  wonderful  and  convincing  sense  of  God's 
presence;  a  communion  with  the  Unseen,  they 
tell  us,  so  enduring  and  withal  so  practically 


PRAYER  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND     133 

human  that  all  the  hard  and  dark  places  of  the 
world,  one  is  sure  somehow,  are  not  eternally 
hard  and  dark  at  all:  they  are  just  places  of 
trial,  it  may  be  even  unto  death,  but  out  of  which 
every  human  soul  must  eventually  escape  into  the 
light  and  comfort  of  God's  presence,  into  the 
larger  Life,  into  the  sweet  serenity  of  the 
Father's  strong  soul.  This,  because  they  have 
seen  the  veiled  face  of  God,  they  say,  and  have 
beheld  that  time-worn  divine  countenance  all 
aglow  with  human  sympathies,  all  firm  and 
patient  and  hopeful,  as  if  he  were  determined 
with  a  great,  divine  strength  and  resolution  to 
prevail  over  all  our  human  destinies,  to  bless  all 
our  human  lives,  to  put  into  our  faltering  human 
souls  something  of  the  force,  the  resolution,  the 
righteousness,  the  iron-like  love  of  his  own  un- 
conquerable humanity.  What  wonder  that  they 
are  glad  and  confident,  these  men  of  prophetic 
vision  and  saintly  lives !  Do  they  not  walk  daily 
with  a  great  Companion,  an  incurably  human 
God? 

This  is  the  sort  of  walk  you  and  I  may  have 
with  God,  if  only  we  too  will  have  the  courage 
to  believe  in  the  ever-present  reality  of  God  in 
every  place  and  time  of  our  human  life.  Thus 
to  know  God  we  must  learn  —  yes,  learn,  for  it 
is  not  easy  at  first  —  to  pray*  to  practice  the 
presence  of  God.  This  is  praying,  I  think:  to 
pause  in  the  midst  of  some  very  practical,  some 
very  worldly  occupation  when  perhaps  the  im- 


134?    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

pulse  to  hastiness,  ungenerosity,  dishonesty  is  up- 
on us,  or  when  some  great  and  lowering  passion 
of  the  inner  life  is  tearing  us  asunder  —  to 
pause,  I  say,  and  remember  that  underlying  all 
the  heat  and  passion  of  life  there  is  still  the 
great  Spirit  of  the  living  God.  In  his  friendly, 
manly  presence  the  narrowing  temptation  be- 
comes so  frail,  the  grip  upon  us  of  passion  so 
slight  that  in  that  solemn  moment  of  wordless 
prayer  we  find  ourselves  once  more  men!  strong 
in  the  consciousness  of  a  larger  Life  manning 
ours. 

In  this  wordless  prayer,  in  this  simple  walk- 
ing with  God  even  in  the  heat  of  one's  daily 
temptations  and  passions,  in  this  unconscious 
praying  to  God  from  street  to  street  as  one 
mingles  with  the  prayerless  crowds  of  men  and 
women,  in  this  ever-ready  spirit  of  prayer  there 
is  a  quality  unspeakably  enduring  and  purifying. 
To  practice  the  presence  of  God !  How  it  clears 
one's  vision!  how  it  sweetens  and  deepens  one's 
life!  how  it  infuses  into  one's  daily  rounds  of 
business,  of  trial  and  error,  of  successes  and  fail- 
ures, a  still  perpetually  chanting  joy!  In  some 
mysterious  way  —  why  not  by  the  very  spirit  of 
a  living  God  in  the  world-home  of  men  ?  —  this 
man's  constant  vision  is  contagious!  In  all  its 
clearness  and  cleanness  and  joy  that  man's  sense 
of  God  catches  in  the  lives  and  hearts  of  all  his 
fellows:  they  too  feel,  they  know  not  why,  that 
somehow  the  world  is  good,  somehow  God  is! 


PRAYER  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND      135 

That  man,  transfigured  in  the  light  of  a  God's 
humane  Presence,  is  apt  to  draw  all  men  up  to 
him. 

I  like  to  think  that  the  great  throbbing  Life 
round  about  us  is  comforted  by  the  presence  in  its 
world-soul  of  such  faithful  sons  and  daughters. 
Natural  parts  they  are  of  that  larger  Life :  their 
constant  dependence  upon,  and  faithful  obedi- 
ence to  the  deeper  currents  of  the  diviner  Life 
is  as  simple  and  steady  as  God's  own  soul  of 
goodness  and  love  itself.  A  perfect,  natural 
communion  of  the  human  with  the  divine  Life; 
man  a  faithful  reflection  of  God;  God  a  present 
Companion  of  man.  Even  so  man  discovers 
God,  sees  him  beyond  argument  and  yet  beyond 
doubt  face  to  face,  Man  to  man,  Friend  to  friend ; 
an  unfailing  vision  of  divine  Manhood,  a  per- 
fect union  of  man  and  God,  all  life  a  faithful 
expression  of  a  great  God-Man!  Blessed  are 
these  pure  in  heart,  for  they  have  seen  God. 

vn 

As  to  sinners.  For  there  are  those  to  whom 
the  divine-human  face  of  the  world's  soul  is  not 
ever  present  and  familiar.  They  are  men 
blinded  and  deceived  in  ways  of  evil,  from  whom 
the  humaner  face  of  the  world's  self  is  veiled  by 
the  shadow  of  the  world's  brutalities  and  mon- 
strosities. The  theologians  describe  such  as 
"  convicted  of  sin."  The  more  artistic  of  these 
sinners  have  in  all  ages  portrayed  hells  and  devils 


136   RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

to  mar  men's  more  mystic  visions  of  heavens  and 
gods.  They  in  their  way  have  sounded  being 
as  deeply  as  the  saints  we  were  just  celebrating. 
Only  they  have  seen  things  perversely,  baldly, 
unmystically.  They  too  have  seen  a  soul  of 
things  face  to  face,  Man  to  man,  Fiend  to  fiend. 
There  is  an  oriental  vision  I  once  read  and 
have  not  easily  forgotten  meanwhile.  It  is  the 
vision  of  a  man  (Arg-una)  who  is  about  to  enter 
into  a  great  battle.  The  outcome  of  the  im- 
pending fray  he  knows  not.  It  may  well  mean 
his  death.  So  he  prays  to  his  God  (Vishnu) 
for  a  full  vision  of  his  divine  being,  to  see  his 
god  face  to  face,  ere  he  should  die.  Then  the 
vision  comes  of  a  great  world-beast:  a  great 
"  swallower  of  the  other  gods,"  "  of  countless 
forms  possessed  of  many  arms,  stomachs,  mouths, 
and  eyes  on  all  sides,"  "  having "  indeed  "  a 
mouth  like  a  blazing  fire,  and  heating  the  uni- 
verse with  his  radiance,"  "  of  wonderful  and  ter- 
rible form,"  with  "  groups  of  gods  entering  into 
him,"  "  with  a  gaping  mouth  and  with  large 
blazing  eyes,"  revealing  a  mouth  of  "  terrible, 
fearful  and  horrific  jaws  resembling  the  fire  of 
destruction  "  with  human  heads  "  smashed  "  and 
"  stuck  in  the  spaces  between  the  teeth ; "  men 
like  moths  entering  a  blazing  fire  are  entering 
his  mouth  "  to  their  destruction ;  "  "  swallowing 
all  these  people  "  this  God  of  horrific  mien  is 
"  licking  them  over  and  over  again  from  all  sides 
with  blazing  mouths ; "  a  god  whose  "  fierce 


PRAYER  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND     137 

splendors  filling  the  whole  universe  with  their 
effulgence  are  heating  it " ;  god  of  "  death,"  the 
"  destroyer  of  worlds." 

A  god  of  death  and  destruction  indeed!  the 
image  of  lowered  bestial  manhood;  the  very 
antithesis  in  all  regards  of  the  Man-God  vision 
of  the  more  saintly  souls  of  the  world.  Such  a 
vision  of  God  with  a  cosmic  hell  as  his  environ- 
ment is  but  the  enlarged  image  of  many  a  man's 
inner  soul;  a  human  soul  of  fierce  and  self-de- 
stroying impulses  glimpsed  on  a  world-wide  scale ; 
man  creating  a  God-Beast  in  his  own  image ;  man 
meeting  God  face  to  face,  Man  to  man,  Fiend  to 
fiend,  as  I  have  said. 

This,  or  some  other  of  no  less  horrific  mien  is 
the  vision  encountered  sooner  or  later  by  men 
who  become  depressed  by  the  powers  of  evil  in 
the  world.  And  such  powers  are  plentiful 
enough,  God  knows:  disease;  anger;  unbroth- 
erliness;  idiocy;  senility;  concupiscence;  dis- 
honesty in  high  places;  men  losing  their  souls 
through  abuses  of  the  body  and  of  the  spirit; 
every  man's  hand,  it  would  seem,  turned  against 
his  own  soul  and  that  of  his  brother ;  unmanhood 
and  bestiality,  in  short. 

Men,  or  their  sons  and  daughters,  not  in- 
frequently go  mad  in  these  paths  of  unrighteous- 
ness. Ignorance,  over-work,  folly,  soul-abuse, 
these  are  all  forms  of  immorality;  they  all  are 
forms  of  wwvisdom.  To  avoid  them  requires  not 
that  a  man  be  educated  in  the  schools;  they  are 


138    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

•violations  merely  of  a  man's  natural  instincts,  his 
mother-wit,  his  mother-wisdom  in  truth.  And 
they  have  their  reward  in  the  modern  visions  of  a 
psychic  hell.  Recently  I  had  a  letter  from  an 
alienist  who  tells  me  that  practically  every  case 
of  insanity  is  brought  on  by  the  sin  or  folly  of 
the  deranged  soul  himself  or  of  some  of  his  fore- 
bears. 

Folly  and  sin,  these,  just  as  surely  as  wisdom 
and  righteousness,  have  their  reward:  sinners  in- 
wardly beget  their  hell  and  its  fiend  just  as  surely 
as  saints  inwardly  catch  the  vision  of  heaven  and 
its  god.  Men's  lives  pray  more  practically  than 
their  words,  their  secret  thoughts  than  their  open 
professions.  As  a  man  thinketh  in  his  heart  so 
is  he ;  and  even  so  is  his  god,  too. 

Say  what  you  will,  you  idealists  and  aesthetes, 
you  have  no  closet  deep  enough  to  conceal  in 
every  part  the  skeleton  of  the  world's  arch- 
fiend. The  Devil  is  no  anatomical  monstrosity,  I 
grant.  I  agree  with  you  in  your  animadversions 
against  the  crude  forms  in  which  the  primitive 
man's  fears  clothed  the  powers  of  darkness  of  the 
world.  Disembody  the  devil,  by  all  means !  But 
he  remains, —  invisible,  psychic,  powerful ;  indeed 
in  all  his  unseen  powers  closely  akin  to  the  god  of 
your  idealistic  thought.  "  Strike,  strike,  in  the 
name  of  God."  Work  against  these  desolating 
powers,  these  evils,  these  sins.  Throttle  and  ut- 
terly destroy  this  invisible  world-fiend!  Else  his 
poison  will  spread  and  spread,  from  father  to  son, 


PRAYER  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND     139 

from  individual  to  society,  from  generation  to 
generation,  from  planet  to  planet  till  the  death- 
power  thereof  shall  enter  and  madden  and  destroy 
the  very  soul  of  God ! 

I  walked  one  day  in  a  beautiful  way.  God 
seemed  there.  My  heart  sang  a  song  in  major 
key.  Almost  I  was  persuaded  to  become  an  ideal- 
ist of  absolute  faith.  Evil  seemed  so  powerless, 
so  unreal,  so  remote  withal.  But  I  met  an  idiot 
in  the  way!  His  deformed, —  nay,  his  destroyed 
—  manhood,  was  not  "  good  in  the  making."  He 
was  hell. 

But  sinners  have  been  known  to  escape  this  hell, 
to  replace  with  a  vision  of  God  the  horrific  fea- 
tures of  this  invisible  world-fiend.  They  have 
spent  indeed  long  dreary  years  in  prayerless  doubt 
of  the  very  existence  of  any  eternal  courage  and 
goodness,  and  pity  and  love  in  the  world.  But 
one  day  they  have  roused  themselves  with  a  mighty 
oath !  and  have  struck  out  against  these  evil  pow- 
ers and  visions !  —  against  them  have  opposed  the 
simple  powers  of  their  own  inward  Manhood! 
Man  against  devil  then !  And,  behold,  the  evil 
things  have  vanished  like  the  howling  winds  of 
the  night  and  the  lonely  fighter  has  found  himself 
a  very  god. 

A  very  god,  I  say.  Fighting  there  in  the  dark- 
ness was  praying  in  its  effect.  That  sinner-man 
in  his  triumphant  Manliness  finds  in  himself  a 
beyond-himself.  He  places  his  poor  frightened, 
maddened  self  in  the  larger  and  deeper  currents 


140    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

of  God's  self,  the  world's  soul;  and  finds  it  with 
him.  He  prays.  Thus  praying  in  action  he 
gropes  his  way  back  into  the  light  of  the  divine 
face  of  things.  And  he  sees  this  goodly  face  of 
God  with  a  new  and  deeper  insight  born  of  his 
awful  experience  of  evil  and  darkness  and  mad- 
ness in  the  world;  he  sees  something  of  infinite 
pity,  something  of  divine  patience  and  sorrow, 
something  of  infinite  humanity  in  the  time-worn 
and  world-weary  face  of  his  God.  Praying  thus, 
he  sees  the  God-life  all  seared  and  marred  and 
scarred  with  the  battles  and  wounds  of  life;  he 
sees  the  great  strong  soul  of  God  all  sensitive  and 
quivering  with  the  wants  and  hopes  and  struggles 
of  humanity's  life.  Finding  this  way  of  prayer 
he  cries,  full  and  glad  and  triumphant :  "  I  be- 
hold within,  I  am,  the  infinite  person  and  heart  of 
God.  O  God,  I  come,  I  come."  And  of  a  cer- 
tainty God  meets  him  there  in  the  darkness  face 
to  face,  as  Man  to  man,  as  Friend  to  friend. 

vin 

As  Friend  to  friend,  that  is  the  point.  In 
hours  of  failure,  in  times  of  soul-weariness  after 
hard  and  defeated  struggle  against  the  influence 
of  the  evil  powers  in  his  inner  life,  then  even  a 
grown  man  like  you  and  me  may  pray,  may  rest 
his  soul  in  the  comprehending  soul  of  the  world, 
the  infinite  Father  of  all  earth's  humaner  religions. 
So  we  shall  recover  courage  and  strength  for  the 
morrow.  And  then  we  must  once  more  arise !  and 


PRAYER  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND     141 

build !  A  practice  of  prayer  that  needs  no  artic- 
ulate utterance :  it  sees  directly  the  manly,  friendly 
person  of  God,  its  own  beyond-self,  its  own  larger 
Life,  the  great  universe's  communism  with  hu- 
manity. 

As  Man  to  man,  that  is  the  point.  In  hours 
of  strong  and  vigorous  manhood,  but  when  the 
way  of  life  is  not  clear,  when  your  man's  deepest 
searching  of  his  inner  soul  brings  no  light  and 
you  know  not  whither  stretches  the  onward  road 
nor  where  the  region  of  the  larger  Life;  then 
again  this  way  of  prayer  is  opened.  You  pray, 
—  or  call  it  what  you  will.  You  do  naturally 
open  your  life  to  the  larger  Life  and  —  somehow 
the  light,  the  guidance,  the  vision  perfect,  clear, 
unmistakable  comes  straightway:  you  know, 
nay,  you  are  most  actually  in  the  deep  currents 
of  the  universe's  own  righteousness  in  this  hour, 
most  fittingly  called,  of  prayer. 

Pray  then  to  God!  unafraid  and  unashamed, 
pray !  Speak  to  the  larger  life  as  naturally  and 
as  simply  as  you  would  talk  to  yourself.  Pray- 
ing is  that  essentially,  God  is  chiefly  just  that: 
your  deeper  self,  your  larger  Life.  He  is  you! 
Man  alive,  God  is  just  you!  in  the  making;  you! 
in  possession  of  all  the  powers  of  the  world  and 
all  the  experience  of  the  ages.  Possess  yourself 
then !  possess  yourself  of  all  these  beyond-human 
powers  and  experiences  and  go  praying  and 
chanting  on  your  way  of  righteous  manhood! 
By  praying  so>  a  strong  man  may  gain  all  the 


142    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

marvelous  insights  of  the  larger  Life,  the  God- 
Life. 

Praying  in  such  wise  does  secure  all  the  riches 
of  God's  own  being  and  love.  The  God  of  hu- 
man life,  the  great  Man-God  by  a  perfect  in- 
stinct, a  superlative  —  may  I  say,  telepathic?  — 
sensitiveness  to  all  things  human,  does  indeed  feel 
the  prayers  of  men  who  stand  in,  most  literally  vn» 
his  Presence  girt,  ready  to  receive  and  obey  the 
commands  of  this  living  and  friendly  and  right- 
eous God. 


V 

THE  UNKNOWN  GOD 

i 

The  supremest  vocation  of  the  preacher  and 
priest  in  all  ages  and  in  all  religions  has  been 
to  reveal  to  their  people  the  unknown  God  under- 
lying all  their  speculations  and  aspirations,  to 
charge  with  vitality  the  region  of  a  man's  doubts 
and  unholy  superstitions.  It  is  profoundly  im- 
pressive to  reflect  upon  the  great  scriptures  of 
men,  the  documents  in  which  the  ages'  geniuses 
have  sought  to  lift  the  veil  of  mystery  which  sur- 
rounds the  human  life.  One  is  moved  not  so  much 
by  the  rudeness  or,  as  the  case  may  be,  the  pathet- 
ic cleverness  with  which  the  human  soul  has  solved 
its  mysteries ;  he  is  challenged  rather  by  the  star- 
tling fact  itself  that  on  this  borderland  of  mystery 
where  there  is  no  knowledge  to  guide  the  human 
life  the  soul  of  man  has  been  most  heroically 
alive  to  the  eternal  verities,  most  faithfully  and 
splendidly  aware  of  the  divine  life.  It  would  seem 
to  be  the  peculiar  mystery  of  this  unknowable 
God  surrounding  the  human  spheres  that,  while 
he  defeats  with  his  everlasting  "  No  "  all  the  con- 
jectures and  hypotheses  of  logical  men,  yet  with 
his  everlasting  "  Yes  "  he  receives  and  confirms 
all  the  advances  and  beliefs  of  the  childlike  mind. 
The  same  God  who  seems  to  stiffen  and  threaten 
143 


144?    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

under  the  assaults  of  men's  conceits  of  knowledge 
is  tenderly  attentive  to  the  unconscious  wants  of 
the  very  animals  and  children  of  the  world.  The 
same  God  who  seems  to  move  relentlessly  and  ma- 
jestically in  the  heavens  above  dwells  in  innocency 
and  simplicity  within  the  spirits  of  the  pure  in 
heart.  A  profound  mystery,  this!  It  is  surely 
in  the  region  of  God's  unseen  being  that  we  shall 
find  the  point  of  reconciliation  between  the  mys- 
tery of  God's  unthinkable  immensity  and  the  mys- 
tery of  his  childlike  simplicity. 

We  must  sooner  or  later  face  consciously  and 
honorably  this  region  of  eternal  mystery  which 
has  surrounded  men  in  all  ages,  and  within  which 
they  have  erected  their  altars  to  unknown  gods. 
It  is  in  a  most  profound  degree  a  region  of  mys- 
tery and  its  god  in  a  very  real  sense  a  Great  Un- 
known. In  the  infinite  depths  out  beyond  the 
most  distant  fixed  star  there  is  nothing  but  mys- 
tery !  deep  within  your  inmost  soul,  in  the  infinite 
soul-abyss  underlying  all  your  daily  trials  and 
passions,  nothing  but  mystery! 

n 

One  day  I  witnessed  a  strange  experiment  in  the 
laboratory  of  an  expert  chemist.  He  warned  me 
away  from  a  spot  near  which  he  was  preparing 
his  experiment,  but  where  my  inquiring  eye  could 
see  nothing.  Yet  he  assured  me  that  was  the 
most  real  and  active  point  in  the  entire  region  of 
his  strange  experiment.  Then  he  grasped  a  wire 


THE  UNKNOWN  GOD  145 

of  the  toughest  known  metal  and  thrust  it  into 
this  region,  and  instantly  it  coiled  and  curled  and 
melted  into  nothing.  And  nowadays,  when  I  ob- 
serve men  thrusting  their  hard  and  monstrous 
definitions  into  the  region  of  God's  great,  active, 
unseen  white-hot  life,  I  seem  to  see  their  inquisi- 
tive definitions  coiling  and  twisting  and  melting 
into  sheer  nothing. 

Nor  is  this  the  complaint  of  a  rude  wwbelief  in 
the  Unseen.  Rather  is  it  the  protest  of  a  tender 
mysticism  which,  blinded  by  the  intense  light  from 
the  invisible  countenance  of  God,  henceforth 
shrinks  from  a  too  familiar  approach  to  his  great 
white  throne.  "  Canst  thou  by  searching  find  out 
God?  "  "  O  Lord,  I  believe:  help  thou  mine  un- 
belief," "Though  he  slay  me,  yet  will  I  trust 
him,"  "  To  think  that  God  is  as  we  can  think  him 
to  be  is  blasphemy  ", —  these  and  ten  thousand 
similar  cries  bespeak  a  soul  which  has  faced  the 
eternal  mystery  of  God  and  has  returned  to  life 
unconceited  and  undishonored ;  for  it  does  not 
claim  to  have  seen  when  its  eyes  were  blinded,  nor 
to  have  heard  when  its  ears  were  deafened,  nor  to 
have  understood  when  its  judgment  was  paralyzed 
by  its  direct,  instant  contact  with  this  infinitely 
mysterious  and  unknown  God. 

m 

I  wonder  if  we  have  not  touched  here  the  secret 
of  losing  one's  life  in  order  to  find  it  in  God. 
There  are  many  things  men  were  wont  to  sacrifice 


146    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

on  their  altars  to  an  unknown  God  —  their  fruits, 
their  beasts,  their  sons,  daughters,  and  wives,  their 
own  bodies  to  be  burned.  But  such  burnt  offer- 
ings somehow  failed  to  satisfy  the  needs  of  their 
own  worshipping  souls,  nor  yet  the  invisible  de- 
mands of  their  unknown  divinity.  Then  men 
came  to  a  nearer  insight  into  the  longings  of  their 
own  souls  and  into  the  needs  of  the  divine  life. 
God  requires  of  a  man  only  that  he  shall  love 
mercy,  do  justice,  and  walk  humbly  with  his  God; 
that  he  sell  all  that  he  has  and  give  to  the  poor; 
a  sacrificing  of  one's  wealth  and  ambitions,  a 
placing  upon  the  altar  an  utterly  broken  spirit 
and  contrite  heart.  But  now  as  a  last  and  inex- 
haustible demand  of  the  Great  God  Beyond  it 
seems  that  he  who  would  know  God  must  sacrifice 
on  the  altar  the  very  instruments  of  knowledge 
itself,  his  very  intelligence,  his  very  soul,  his  very 
self!  so  majestic  and  so  infinitely  real  are  the  pur- 
poses and  longings  of  the  divine  life.  Without 
conceit  of  knowledge,  without  dishonor  of  mind, 
without  pollution  of  soul,  a  man  must  face  the 
Unknown  Eternal  and  cry :  "  Oh,  thou  great 
Unknown,  accept  now  my  supreme  sacrifice. 
Longing  above  all  else  to  know  thee,  I  yet  destroy 
my  instruments  of  knowing.  In  this  supreme 
hour  of  self-sacrifice,  not  knowing  thee,  I  yet 
yield  my  life  to  thine  eternity  in  the  simple 
faith  that  thou  art,  and  with  the  insatiable  demand 
that  thou  shalt  be  good  and  brave  and  beautiful. 
Soul  of  my  soul,  bless  now  my  life."  And  in  this 


THE  UNKNOWN  GOD  147 

hour  of  supreme  soul-sacrifice  the  life  of  God,  the 
infinite  Good  Will,  reveals  itself  in  the  human  life 
with  an  overmastering  intensity:  one  is  lifted 
above  all  his  natural  longings,  above  all  his  daily 
ends,  beyond  his  practical,  knowing  self  into  the 
invisible  home  of  God.  Out  beyond  the  most  dis- 
tant star  there  is  nothing,  only  mystery,  nothing 
only  God!  Deep  within  your  own  soul-abyss 
there  is  nothing,  only  mystery,  nothing  only  God ! 

rv 

A  man's  soul  thus  tested  and  tempered  by  the 
invisible  fire  on  his  altar  to  an  unknown  God,  no 
longer  withers  and  shrinks  when  extended  in  the 
direction  of  the  hidden  God  of  the  ages.  Rather 
does  such  a  soul  grow  and  glow  with'  something 
of  the  everlasting  enthusiasm  and  divine  health  of 
God's  own  unseen  life.  His  poor  purposes  in 
some  mysterious  way  gain  all  the  reality  and  dig- 
nity of  the  divine  life,  his  hopes  somehow  contrib- 
ute to  and  are  strengthened  by  the  divine  hope, 
his  courage  by  direct  ways  partakes  of  the  perfect 
courage  with  which  God  himself  faces  unafraid 
his  own  eternal  life.  All  that  one  can  ask  of 
purity  of  heart  and  in  honesty  of  mind  comes 
straightway  and  unasked  out  of  the  heart  and 
mind  of  God  into  the  heart  and  mind  of  that  man. 
God  appears  as  the  infinite  fulfiller  of  all  our  own 
high  wishes,  the  satisfier  of  all  our  eternal  de- 
mands. 

There  is  a  subtle  argument  in  a  recent  play, 


148    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

entitled  "  The  Servant  in  the  House,"  a  meaning 
which,  I  imagine,  exceeds  the  conscious  intention 
of  the  author  himself.  In  an  early  scene  the 
Christ  spirit  is  represented  as  hovering  about  a 
young  girl,  Mary  by  name,  whose  tender  and  pure 
life  is  just  ripening  into  conscious  womanhood. 
The  spirit  of  Christ  urges  Mary  to  wish  hard  for 
the  one  thing  her  life  most  needs.  She  replies 
naturally  that  she  does  not  believe  in  such  a  game 
of  wishing.  The  Christ  replies  that  she  must 
wish  and  must  believe  that  her  wish  will  come  true. 
The  sole  condition  of  the  wishing  game  is  that 
her  wish  shall  go  deep,  deep  down  into  her  life. 
In  such  deep,  soul-searching  wishing  nothing  is 
too  good  to  be  true.  The  soul's  disinterested 
demands  upon  reality  find  their  fulfilment  in  very 
truth. 

Mary  agrees  to  play  this  game  of  wishing. 
Then  for  the  first  time  in  her  young  life  she 
searches  for  the  thing  her  soul  most  needs.  Once 
more  the  Christ  spirit  broods  over  her,  and  there 
grows  upon  her  the  sense  that  her  life  requires 
most  of  all  a  father  who  shall  be  good  and  brave 
and  beautiful.  And  so  she  wishes,  she  demands 
outright,  that  her  life  shall  receive  this  new  dimen- 
sion of  father-love,  that  her  deep  need  shall  be 
fulfilled  in  a  living  father  who  should  be  in  truth 
brave  and  good  and  beautiful.  Then  the  scene 
changes,  and  the  form  of  struggling  fatherhood 
appears  before  her.  His  face  is  unclean,  his  hair 
unkempt,  and  his  body  all  knotted  and  gnarled 


THE  UNKNOWN  GOD  149 

with  the  toils  of  life.  For  years  his  life  has 
staggered  under  a  secret  sorrow:  he  has  been  in 
danger  of  losing  his  soul  in  the  agony  of  his  un- 
spoken loneliness.  But  the  one  eternal,  infinite 
thing  in  his  being  is  his  love  of  his  little  child 
and  his  longing  for  her  presence  in  his  life. 
This  unknown  man  is  in  reality  Mary's  father. 
She  gazes  a  while  into  his  seemingly  unlovely, 
untrue,  unbrave  face  and  discovers  his  secret  grief, 
his  wordless  longing  for  his  lost  child.  She  com- 
forts him  and  then  tells  him  of  her  own  wish  for 
a  father  who  should  be  good  and  true  and  beauti- 
ful. Instantly  the  father  spirit  rises  and  responds 
to  this  image  of  goodness,  bravery,  and  beauty 
as  he  appears  in  his  child's  eye  of  faith.  In  the 
sunlight  of  this  child's  high  expectation  even  his 
fatherliness  mysteriously  ripens  into  a  deeper 
dignity.  Finally  after  the  scene  has  changed,  the 
father  spirit  having  resolved  to  sacrifice  his  own 
soul's  love  and  to  face  his  life  bravely,  manfully, 
and  even  without  his  child's  answering  presence 
and  love,  Mary,  gazing  into  the  marred  and  sub- 
dued face  of  this  mighty,  unknown  man,  recog- 
nizes the  noble  father  of  her  soul-searching  wish, 
a  Man  strong  and  brave  and  beautiful. 

Thus,  perhaps  unconsciously,  does  the  genius  of 
this  strong  drama  reach  the  point  of  contact  be- 
tween the  unknown  God  and  the  child  of  his  inner 
longing.  There  is  this  answering  of  soul  to  soul 
in  the  relationship  of  God  and  man.  The  unseen 
God  of  the  Great  Beyond  answers  from  the  depths 


150    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

within  our  souls  every  noble  wish,  every  honorable 
demand  of  our  human  life.  The  divine  character 
which  defies  all  definition  is  as  sensitive  and 
plastic  as  the  soul  of  a  little  child.  Our  human- 
ity and  God's  divinity,  our  sonship  and  his  f  ather- 
liness  are  in  the  deepest  and  most  literal  sense 
mutual.  The  invisible  God,  putting  forever  be- 
hind himself  the  perfect  peace  and  silence  of  eter- 
nity, takes  on  our  struggling  and  clamorous 
humanity,  responds  patiently,  gladly,  to  all  our 
upward  and  outward  reaching  passions.  And, 
in  thus  finding  and  furthering  you  and  me,  the 
unknown  God  finds  and  furthers  his  own  living 
soul.  Henceforth  for  all  eternity  the  highest 
reach  of  our  sonship  touches  and  moves  to  the 
quick  the  deeps  of  his  f  atherliness.  Each  advance 
we  make  in  the  direction  of  purity  and  love  is  met 
and  furthered  by  an  answering  wave  of  divine 
character  and  of  divine  love  from  within  the  in- 
visible soul  of  the  unknown  God.  Henceforth 
and  for  all  time  you  and  I  fulfil  a  place  in  the 
universal  heart  and  life  of  the  unknown  divinity : 
each  of  us  by  his  faithfulness  may  soothe  or  by 
his  unfaithfulness  may  intensify  the  great  void  of 
life  aching  within  the  divine  being.  There  is 
within  the  unsearchable  depths  of  the  world's  soul 
a  divine  uneasiness  of  spirit:  it  cannot  rest  until 
you  and  I  and  all  men  recognize  in  that  unseen 
soul  beneath  and  beyond  the  time-worn  face  of 
God  all  that  is  brave  and  good  and  beautiful. 


THE  UNKNOWN  GOD  151 


The  evangelical  theology  argues  that  the 
Father  requires  a  Son  to  fulfil  his  nature.  In  this 
it  builds  more  wisely  than  it  knows.  The  sons  of 
God  complete  his  nature  in  a  most  literal  and  in- 
timate sense.  In  relieving  the  exquisite,  undefined 
pain  of  unrequited  love  in  the  divine  heart  of 
things  we  men  add  to  the  Father  a  new  dimension 
of  conscious  purpose,  a  purpose  of  human  right- 
eousness which  henceforth  transcends  all  the 
physical  world-creating  impulses  of  God's  cosmic 
life.  The  hour  of  your  soul  sacrifice  upon  the 
altar  of  this  unknown  God  of  cosmos  is  the  hour 
of  the  Father's  soul  realization ;  the  place  where 
your  soul  finds  rest  in  God  is  the  place  where 
God's  soul  finds  rest  in  you;  the  time  when  your 
spirit  is  lost  in  God's  immensity  is  the  time  when 
God's  simplicity  is  found  in  you.  It  is  the  hour 
and  place  of  perfect  atonement  and  peace;  the 
condition  under  which  the  unknown  God,  invisible 
in  his  power  and  character,  faces  with  and 
through  you  all  the  desert  places  even  beyond  the 
stars  and  all  the  waste  places  in  human  souls,  and 
causes  them  to  blossom  and  fructify  through  all 
time.  The  mystery  which  surrounds  the  world 
and  human  life  is  God  in  all  simplicity,  in  all 
mightiness,  in  all  expectancy:  it  is  all  alive  with 
the  invisible,  divine  character  and  love  —  man  and 
God  mutually  conscious  each  in  the  other.  The 
great  beyond  is  filled  with  God's  invisible  patience. 


152    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

the  untiring  hopefulness,  the  glad  braveness,  the 
perfect  honorableness  and  righteousness  of  spirit 
in  which  the  divine  life  inhabits  eternity. 

Beyond  the  most  distant  star  there  is  nothing 
save  mystery  and  God  and  eternity!  Within  the 
soul-abysses  of  human  life,  underlying  all  your 
daily  trials  and  passions  and  sins  nothing  save 
mystery  and  God  and  eternity! 


VI 
THE  INVISIBLE  HUMANITY  OF  GOD 

i 

There  is  one  conviction  of  the  inner  life  to 
which  we  men  of  religion  must  commit  our  spirits 
absolutely  and  unreservedly.  It  is  the  sense  of 
God's  real  presence  in  our  human  lives.  Men 
have  defined  the  spirit  of  God  in  a  thousand 
ways.  A  man  of  science  seeks  an  adequate  ex- 
pression of  God  in  terms  of  physical  majesty: 
God  is  the  infinite  energy  present  in  unthinkable 
intensity  in  the  great  teeming  cosmos  round 
about  us.  The  man  of  philosophy  expresses 
God  in  terms  of  spiritual  majesty:  God  is  infinite 
Spirit  interpenetrating  and  transfiguring  the  ma- 
chine we  call  the  world.  The  man  of  sorrow 
finds  God  a  spirit  acquainted  with  grief;  the 
man  of  joy,  a  spirit  of  infinite  gladness ;  the  man 
discouraged  by  the  hard  pressure  of  life  upon 
him  finds  in  God  a  spirit  of  infinite  restfulness 
and  unconquerable  confidence ;  the  man  of  unholy 
passion  attains  some  day  in  God  a  life  of  perfect 
purity ;  the  man  of  impatient  spirit,  a  life  of  in- 
finite patience.  And  so  the  tender  life  of  God 
unfolds  itself  in  infinite  ways  in  the  lives  of  us 
human  beings. 


153 


154    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 


Now,  it  is  the  genuineness,  the  reality  and  cer- 
tainty of  this  divine  presence  in  our  human  life 
that  I  want  to  make  clear  in  these  moments  of 
our  meditation  together.  I  have  known  many 
wavering  men  who  have  felt  this  world-old  call 
of  the  divine  life  in  their  souls  but  who  have  been 
either  too  timid  or  too  perplexed  to  yield  to  its 
eternal  pressure  upon  their  lives.  In  their  timid- 
ity of  spirit  they  have  seemed  to  themselves  to 
be  unworthy  of  the  divine  presence,  unable  to 
live  every  moment  unashamed  in  the  sight  of 
God.  Or  they  have  been  too  perplexed  by  the 
rudeness  and  crudeness  of  the  world  of  men  round 
about  them  to  believe  that  humanity  is  indeed 
and  in  truth  the  garment  of  a  great  inner  di- 
vinity. 

Yet  this  timidity  and  confusion  of  spirit  al- 
ways fade  away  in  the  light  of  a  great  experi- 
ence of  God.  In  meditation  upon  the  presence 
of  God  in  the  human  race,  in  meditation  upon 
the  saintly  men  and  women  who  all  through  the 
ages  have  trusted  in  God  and  were  not  ashamed, 
in  meditation  upon  the  burning,  commanding 
spirit  of  God  discovered  by  those  who  have  stood 
upon  mounts  of  vision  far  above  men  and  worlds 
of  men  —  one  cannot  doubt  that  God  is  1  Our 
timidity  becomes  childish,  our  perplexity  merely 
a  defect  of  our  poor,  finite  humanity.  One  may 
at  last  overcome  this  childishness  and  finiteness 


INVISIBLE  HUMANITY  OF  GOD      155 

of  his  humanity  and  himself  stand  forth  in  the 
light  of  the  ages,  stand  forth  like  a  man!  In 
this  great  experience  of  the  infinite  spirit  of  God 
a  man  discovers  for  the  first  time  and  for  all 
eternity  that  his  own  human  manhood  is  everlast- 
ingly justified  and  dignified  by  the  infinite  and 
invisible  Manhood  of  God. 

We  ought  to  be  very  quiet  and  reverent  and 
solemn  now,  for  here  we  stand  in  the  presence 
of  one  of  the  everlasting  mysteries  of  God. 
Here  we  may  learn  in  silent  meditation  the  way 
of  the  great  overbrooding  spirit  of  God.  It  is 
not  the  way  of  childish  timidities  nor  of  hopeless 
perplexities  of  spirit.  We  must  learn,  sooner  or 
later,  that  the  great  spirit  of  God  cannot  yield 
itself  wholly  to  our  human  life,  cannot  wholly 
put  on  the  perfect  humanity  for  which  the  in- 
finite heart  of  God  is  eternally  crying  out  until 
the  human  spirit  at  whose  portals  the  divine  spirit 
is  ever  waiting  calls  out  openly,  honestly  and 
manfully  "  O  God,  if  thou  be,  enter  my  life  and 
make  it  wholly  thine;  make  it  infinitely  pure,  in- 
finitely alive  to  that  life  of  triumphant  righteous- 
ness and  love  in  which  alone  thy  divine  life  can 
realize  its  infinite  humanity."  Lay  bare  your 
spirit  before  this  living  God,  put  aside  the  very 
sandals  of  your  soul  and  stand  naked  in  spirit 
and  unashamed  in  the  presence  of  God  and  the 
great  spirit  of  God  will  surround  and  invade  your 
being  with  an  almost  terrifying  certainty.  The 
timidity  and  perplexity  of  your  earlier  search 


156    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

for  God  will  remain  only  as  the  memory  and 
symbol  of  your  own  imperfect  humanity.  You 
will  have  learned  for  all  eternity  the  invisible, 
unconquerable  humanity  of  God. 

This,  I  say,  is  the  eternal  mystery  of  the  di- 
vine life:  that  in  the  very  hour  when  the  human 
soul  gives  itself  up  absolutely  to  the  awful  in- 
finity of  God's  being  it  comes  to  know  something 
of  the  infinite  humanity  of  God.  In  abandoning 
one's  self  wholly  to  the  being  of  God  one  finds 
that  in  an  infinitely  mysterious  way  the  divine 
life  is  human,  that  the  very  inmost  being  of  God 
is  reaching  out  infinitely  toward  all  that  is  deep- 
est and  intensest  and  noblest  in  the  life  we  call 
human.  The  soul's  communion  with  God  when 
the  spirit  of  God  unobstructed  by  human  hesita- 
tions and  withdrawals  completely  invades  our  hu- 
man life  —  it  is  the  hour  when  we  see  our  human 
life  in  its  infinite  dimensions,  the  hour  when  we 
know  the  invisible  humanity  of  God. 

Too  often  men  have  supposed  that  the  point 
of  contact  between  humanity  and  God  is  reached 
by  the  throwing  out  of  many,  magnificent 
phrases,  such  as  omniscience,  omnipotence,  omni- 
presence and  the  like,  when  all  along  the  human 
spirit  has  stood  ready  and  eager  to  believe  in  these 
immense  realities  of  God  if  only  they  could  be 
realized  in  our  poor,  human  life.  Just  how  is  the 
infinite  power,  the  infinite  wisdom,  the  infinite 
presence  of  God  to  move  within  the  narrow  con- 


INVISIBLE  HUMANITY  OF  GOD      157 

fines  of  our  finite  humanity?  Do  not  the  very 
terms  of  our  deification  of  God  estrange  him 
from  the  trials  and  errors  and  sorrows  of  our  hu- 
man lives? 

In  these  quivering  questions  of  poor  humanity 
I  always  seem  to  hear  the  sad  voice  of  a  human 
soul  crying  out  for  the  living  God.  "  Oh,  that 
I  could  find  God;  the  living  God!  I  am  weary 
of  men's  faint  descriptions  of  God.  I  want  God, 
a  patient  and  hopeful  God,  a  Man-God,  whose  in- 
finite being  is  all  alive  with  the  hopes  and  passions 
of  our  human  life,  whose  power  and  presence  are 
engaged  with  men  in  the  way  of  righteousness 
and  love,  whose  infinite  being  is  daily,  hourly  put- 
ting on  the  garments  of  Humanity." 

I  talked  the  other  day  with  a  noble  man  who 
is  spending  the  strong  years  of  his  life  working 
in  city  missions.  He  is  trying  to  redeem  human 
life  at  just  those  points  where  the  divine  life  is 
threatened  by  apparently  incurable  diseases  of  sin. 
He  told  me  of  a  man  whom  he  had  seen  arise  and 
fall  again  and  again  in  a  frightful  struggle  with 
a  degrading  appetite  of  the  soul  that  was  assail- 
ing him.  And  my  friend  said  to  me  "  I  tell  you, 
as  I  watched  the  man,  and  saw  the  divine  fire  ap- 
pear and  then  fade  away,  then  reappear  and 
again  fade  away,  each  reappearance  of  the  spirit 
finding  him  a  little  nearer  the  infinite  light  of 
God,  as  I  watched  the  awful  struggle  and  de- 
termination of  the  spirit  of  God  in  this  fighting, 


158    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

human  soul  —  I  tell  you  I  could  have  worshipped 
the  man,  I  could  have  fallen  on  my  knees  and 
worshipped." 

Well,  don't  you  see  it  was  God  in  the  Man? 
If  ever  there  is  a  God,  it  is  the  God  who  has 
dedicated  his  whole  eternal  life  to  this  struggle 
of  humanity  to  become  divine.  The  hour  in 
which  your  human  life  takes  on  divinity,  the  hour 
in  which  once  for  all  eternity  you  resolve  in 
your  inmost  soul  to  live  always  in  the  presence 
of  an  infinite  being  of  holiness  and  love,  the  hour 
in  which  your  human  life  becomes  triumphantly 
divine  is  just  the  hour  in  which  the  divine  life 
becomes  triumphantly  human. 

m 

And  genuinely  to  believe  in  this  invisible  hu- 
manity of  God  brings  into  the  human  life  a  won- 
derful sense  of  perfect  communion  with  God. 
Do  you  find  the  conditions  of  life  hard?  They 
are  infinitely  harder  for  God,  my  friend.  Is 
your  spirit  clogged  by  the  mass  of  duties  which 
you  wearily  face  with  the  dawn  of  each  new  day? 
Ah,  think  of  the  world-weariness  of  God,  and  be 
still!  Is  a  man's  soul  marred  by  some  vice  of 
his  inner  life?  What  pollutes  man  pollutes  God. 
I  am  looking  always  for  that  prophet  of  the 
spirit  of  God  who  shall  burn  this  world-old  truth 
into  the  souls  of  men:  God  is  in  very  deed  bone 
of  their  bone,  flesh  of  their  flesh,  spirit  of  their 


INVISIBLE  HUMANITY  OF  GOD     159 

spirit;  God  is  in  truth  closer  to  our  human  life 
than  breathing,  nearer  than  hands  and  feet;  all 
the  plague-spots  in  human  life,  all  the  houses  of 
sin,  all  the  hours  of  solitary  unfaithfulness  and 
dishonor,  are  places  and  times  where  the  precious 
spirit  of  God  is  being  debased  and  ruined  for  that 
which  is  not  holy  and  righteous.  Oh!  the  spirit 
of  man  must  hide  itself  in  shame,  must  cry  out 
in  heart-broken  penitence  when  once  it  knows 
the  humiliation  and  suffering  its  faithlessness  has 
brought  into  the  sensitive  spirit  of  God. 

Does  the  glory  of  man  lie  in  triumphing  over 
these  lowering  conditions  of  life?  So  is  it  with 
God.  You  need  not  suppose  that  the  perfection 
of  God  is  for  him  an  eternal,  unworked-for 
beauty  of  soul.  He  who  thinks  he  sees  in  God 
this  placid,  unmoved  and  solitary  perfection  has 
placed  a  poor,  human  soul  in  the  high  place  of 
God  —  a  human  soul  whose  face  is  unmarred  by 
life's  imperfections,  only  because  it  has  al- 
ways been  protected  from  the  winds  that  blow 
and  the  storms  that  wreck.  But  the  spirit  of 
God  has  faced  the  storms  and  winds  of  an  eter- 
nity and  is  still  triumphing  over  a  whole  world 
of  sins  and  pains  and  sorrows.  Who  then  sees 
the  perfection  of  God  sees  in  infinite  number  and 
in  infinite  directions  the  lines  of  Character,  the 
invisible  marks  of  a  divine  Humanity,  whose  nobil- 
ity, whose  perfection  consists  in  the  simple  yet 
unthinkable  sinlessness  of  the  divine  being:  a  di- 


160    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

vine  life  all  full  of  our  human  impulses  and  pas- 
sions, yet  never  once  in  all  eternity  yielding  the 
divine  ideal  to  that  which  is  base  and  mean. 


IV 

Of  this  invisible  humanity  of  God  there  is  no 
visible  sign  or  symbol.  Men  who  ignobly  turn 
from  the  simple,  daily  duties  and  cares  of  life 
and  cry  "  Lord,  show  us  a  sign,"  "  Lord,  Lord 
what  shall  we  do  to  be  saved  "  are  not  ready  for 
the  beatific  vision.  There  is  no  luxury  in  this 
experience  of  God.  In  this  vision  there  is  the 
peace  that  passeth  understanding  but  there  is 
in  it  no  ravishing  luxury  of  spirit.  The  vision 
is  for  him  who  gladly  accepts  its  blessed  chal- 
lenges. It  is  for  him  who  finds  joy  only  in  the 
way  of  righteousness,  whose  spirit  leaps  out  with 
a  great  joy  into  an  eternity  of  life  and  duty; 
for  him  who  knows  not  what  the  everlasting  years 
may  bring  of  joy  or  of  sorrow  into  his  eternal 
spirit  but  who  will  not  doubt  that  his  is  God's 
way,  his  life  God's  life,  his  endless  humanity  the 
ever  patient  and  hopeful  divinity  of  God.  It  is 
for  the  man  who  can  find  in  the  ever  human  and 
understanding  spirit  of  God  the  power  to  recover 
from  some  staggering  blow  of  life,  the  will  to 
feel  the  tender,  wholesome  spirit  of  divine  life 
struggling  and  conquering  day  by  day  in  the  life 
of  humanity.  The  vision  is  for  him  who  for 
God's  sake  sees  every  living  creature  transfigured 
in  this  light  of  the  ages,  who  sees  God  fighting  in 


INVISIBLE  HUMANITY  OF  GOD      161 

the  very  face  of  human  idiocy  and  sin,  who  is 
able  to  see  in  the  desolate  ruins  of  human  institu- 
tions and  of  human  lives  something  of  the  infinite 
sorrow  of  God,  something  of  the  marred  and  de- 
feated spirit  of  the  Father  of  mankind. 

And  yet,  who  save  God  himself  may  cry  "  De- 
feated!" Is  it  not  just  the  mystery  of  this  di- 
vine life  that  it  breathes  forth  an  invisible  and  in- 
fallible faith  in  our  human  lives,  that  in  the  very 
moment  when  human  priests  have  sadly  con- 
demned a  child  of  God  to  eternal  death,  the 
greater,  wiser,  patienter  spirit  of  God  is  there 
endlessly  confident,  infinitely  faithful,  pronounc- 
ing its  everlasting  "  no ;  "  reviving  the  fainting 
spirit;  crooning  over  the  sin-sodden  human  soul; 
soothing  it  to  sleep,  it  may  be  —  but  to  a  sleep 
which  shall  not  end  in  death ;  a  sleep,  rather,  from 
which  the  human  spirit  shall  awaken  refreshed 
and  re-strengthened  to  re-enter  the  life  of  the 
world  and  the  life  of  God?  Once  more,  the  mys- 
tery of  God's  invisible  humanity,  the  unseen  real- 
ity of  a  divine  life  which  is  genuinely,  under- 
standingly  all  that  our  human  life  from  day  to 
day  is  seeking  and  hoping  to  be,  a  divine  life  in 
which  weariness,  impatience  and  hopelessness  are 
ever  present,  seeking  to  defeat  the  infinitudes  sur- 
rounding our  human  life,  and  yet  a  spirit  of  God 
which,  if  weary  never  rests,  if  impatient  never 
strikes,  if  hopeless  never  dies. 


vn 

THE  PRESENT  GOD 


As  the  theme  of  our  evening's  meditation,  I 
have  chosen  to  consider  with  you  the  romance 
of  God's  invisible  humanity,  the  motion  of  his 
unseen  spirit  on-pressing  in  the  souls  of  men. 
This  experience  of  God  can  be  measured  only 
by  the  instrument  of  meditation:  Silence  must 
underly  and  master  the  words  with  which  we  shall 
seek  to  sound  this  invisible  humanity  I  call  God. 
The  persistent  presence  of  divinity  in  the  race 
of  men!  From  the  first  man  with  his  vision  of 
his  own  invisibly  divine  image  in  burning  bush 
and  flaming  star  to  the  last  man  with  his  grasp 
of  God's  human  spirit  regnant  and  watchful  over 
the  star-strewn  heavens  and  the  men-strewn  earth 
—  how  consciously,  patiently,  triumphantly  has 
God's  spirit  pressed  in  upon  the  opening  souls  of 
men!  God  is.  The  invisible  spirit  of  all  hu- 
manity, God  is !  I  know  not  what  may  be  in 
the  infinite  reaches  of  unvisited  space  and  un- 
transpired  time.  I  only  know  that  by  some  com- 
manding passion  of  his  expanseless  being,  by  some 
tender  impulse  of  his  placeless  soul  a  God-Man 
has  come  to  earth  to  dwell  within  men.  He  has 
come  to  dwell  evermore  in  the  lives  of  men,  mak- 
ing his  own  their  trials  and  errors,  their  successes 
162 


THE  PRESENT  GOD  163 

and  joys,  their  goodness  and  loving  kindness. 
There  is  some  strange,  imperative  persuasiveness 
in  this  faith  that  men  of  all  times  and  climes  have 
kept  in  the  living  presence  of  God's  image  in 
their  souls.  It  is  a  direct  perception  of  faith 
which  only  a  suicidal  scepticism  has  ever  defeated. 
As  men's  sense  of  the  brutal  energy  round  about 
them  has  grown,  their  spirits  have  but  gained 
just  so  much  in  trustful  confidence:  this  ma- 
jestic God  of  the  heavens  by  the  'virtue  of  his 
very  power  is  all  the  more  reliably  concerned  for 
their  life,  all  the  more  joyful  in  the  times  of  their 
gladness,  the  more  sad  in  the  hours  of  their  sor- 
row, the  more  tenderly  forgiving  in  the  places  of 
their  sin,  the  more  patient  in  the  days  of  their 
weakness  and  unfaithfulness. 

n 

What  matters  it  then  that  the  earliest  concern 
of  the  divine  life  was  with  the  blind  organizing 
of  the  great  universe  round  about  men?  I  dare 
say  the  human  passions  and  purposes  of  the  uni- 
versal Life  lay  for  countless  ages  concealed  and 
dormant  within  creation's  soul.  But  now! 
Who  can  contemplate  the  drama  of  the  divine 
life  in  the  enlarging  souls  of  men  and  yet  miss 
the  vision  of  a  creative  Life  all  revealed  and  all 
a-quiver  with  human  power?  Why,  the  faith  of 
men  alone  in  their  own  eternal  value,  their  vision 
of  themselves  under  the  form  of  an  endless  di- 
vinity must  have  drawn  a  response  from  the  all- 


164?    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

feeling  spirit:  the  universal  Life  cannot  have 
missed  these  throbs  of  divinity  outpouring  from 
the  newborn  souls  of  men.  How  hardly  could 
the  great  drama  of  divine  faith  have  enacted  it- 
self in  this  world-home  of  men,  had  not  the  im- 
pulses of  men's  righteousness  and  love  become 
at  once  the  deepest  concern  in  the  heart  and  being 
of  God  himself !  Every  act  of  human  righteous- 
ness, each  impulse  of  human  tenderness  and  af- 
fection in  the  world-homes  of  men  are  intimations 
of  an  unspeakable  harmony  aimed  at  hour  by 
hour,  world  by  world,  in  the  heart  and  being  of 
the  universal  life  of  humanity,  the  God  of  man- 
kind. Human  temptations,  trials,  sins  are  but 
signs  of  a  passionate  Life  eternally  present  yet 
everlastingly  mastered  in  the  divine  being,  the  in- 
visible Father-spirit  of  men. 

What  if  it  were  not  even  so?  Suppose  this 
drama  of  the  divine  in  human  life  were,  as  some 
of  the  positivists  would  have  us  believe,  enacting 
itself  on  a  human  stage  alone ;  that  this  on-push- 
ing human  life  were  all  there  is  of  divinity  in  the 
world-life?  Would  not  this  divinity  triumph 
none  the  less?  Would  it  not  grow  silently,  and 
magically  extend  its  sobering,  transforming  pas- 
sion of  divine  life  to  all  men  in  all  generations? 
Would  not  men  under  the  pressure  of  the  di- 
vinity within  acquit  themselves  as  responsible  and 
infallible  gods?  Nay,  would  not  this  perfect  pas- 
sion of  us  human  gods  transpierce,  chasten  and 
soften  the  very  energies  of  the  heavens?  The 


THE  PRESENT  GOD  165 

complaint  of  the  positivist  is  that  men  have  relied 
too  much  upon  the  God  of  their  magic  and  super- 
stition. Meanwhile  the  pathetic  fallacy  of  pos- 
itivism is  that  in  its  turn  it  relies  too  little  upon 
the  Man  of  its  humanitarian  vision.  In  him  is 
the  very  quintessence  of  divine  energy  and  pas- 
sion. His  belief  in  the  regnancy  over  all  things 
of  righteousness  and  love  is  inviolable.  No  crea- 
ture is  so  frail  or  debased,  and  no  creature  so 
monstrous  as  not  to  respond  to  the  touch  of  un- 
affected goodness,  faithfulness  and  purity  in  the 
world.  A  single  pin-point  of  divinity,  a  solitary 
impulse  of  natural  love  in  any  place  or  time  of 
the  world's  being  must  infallibly  master  with  its 
divine  control  all  the  awful  and  terrifying  powers 
of  the  universal  life,  bringing  all  heavens  and  all 
men  within  the  light  and  strength  of  its  con- 
stant life. 

Just  so,  I  believe,  the  divine  life  has  kept  pace 
with  the  life  within  our  human  souls,  inviting, 
guiding  and  furthering  all  our  essays  in  divinity. 
Of  every  enlargement  of  the  spirits  of  men,  of 
every  deepening  experience  in  which  the  race  of 
men  has  come  into  a  profounder  sense  of  God's 
presence  and  into  a  surer  and  more  intimate  com- 
munion with  his  world-old  Life  —  we  may  rest 
assured  that  the  great  spirit  of  God  deep  down  in 
the  souls  of  men  and  far  out  on  the  horizon  of 
the  world's  vast  being,  the  great  heart  of  God 
has  known;  his  invisible  spirit  has  felt  and  has 
poured  in  its  answering  life  and  love.  Ah,  this 


166    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

unseen,  incomparable  humanity  of  God!  How 
silently  and  patiently  it  throbs  out  its  life  in  this 
world-home  of  men.  That  is  God  alive!  —  the 
God  who  has  lived  and  grown  in  all  humanity, 
the  God  who  lives  and  grows  in  you  and  in  me 
this  night  and  eternally,  the  great  Companion  of 
our  hours  of  world-loneliness,  the  great  Physician 
of  our  nights  of  soul-sickness,  the  great  God  of 
our  souls. 

When  will  men  cease  measuring  God  in  cubits? 
When  will  we  cease  esteeming  the  divine  life  by 
the  sheer  heights  and  abysses  of  the  world's  be- 
ing? When  will  men  cease  worshipping  u  His 
Majesty  "  ?  When  shall  we  escape  this  last  form 
of  idolatry,  this  worshipping  of  a  telescopic  im- 
age of  the  unknown  God?  Then,  shall  we 
awaken  and  arise  to  the  true  height  and  tender- 
ness of  God's  invisible  being ! 

m 

There  is  only  one  tragedy  in  life  from  which 
the  human  soul  seems  unable  to  recover,  only  one 
derangement  of  life's  natural  harmony  so  fear- 
some that  the  broken  spirit  deliberates  longingly 
upon  death  eternal.  It  is  the  frightful  loneli- 
ness of  the  soul  that  has  lost  faith  in  the  com- 
panioning love  of  the  divine  life  and  sees  only 
blindness  and  cruelty  in  the  heart  of  the  sur- 
rounding world-life.  Facing  this  fearful  vision 
of  an  untrustworthy  universal  Life  that  sets  it 
about,  the  human  soul  finds  the  very  majesty  that 


THE  PRESENT  GOD  167 

once  commanded  its  confidence  an  instrument  of 
torment:  calamity  impends;  one  blow,  and  this 
human  life  is  staggering  under  an  intolerable 
weight  of  sorrow  and  soul-death. 

One  night  my  path  crossed  that  of  a  lonely 
woman  of  the  world.  I  learned  that  on  that 
very  night  she  harboured  in  her  soul  a  longing 
to  express  her  life  in  a  way  of  sin.  Her  life 
cried  out  against  this  desecration  of  her  child- 
hood's innocency  and  sweet  chastity.  Yet  she 
would  offer  all  upon  the  altar  of  her  generous 
human  love.  As  one  whose  life  is  defeated  save 
for  its  poor,  human  pulse-beats  she  told  me  that 
her  soul  would  no  longer  pray.  She  believed  in 
God;  yes,  and  trembled.  The  Great  Father  was 
dead  and  her  own  soul  had  burned  itself  on  his 
pyre  until  death.  There  seemed  to  her  hence- 
forth more  of  companionship  and  tenderness  in 
the  life  of  sinful  affection  she  contemplated  than 
in  the  whole  being  of  him  she  called  God,  the 
distant  Creator  of  her  ancestral  traditions.  As 
I  turned  silently  and  solemnly  away  leaving  her 
there  in  the  night,  a  solitary  figure,  type  of  all 
the  lonely,  wandering  souls  in  this  great  world,  I 
knew  she  was  beyond  my  human  help,  lost  to  the 
arguments  of  men.  I  knew  that  only  the  infi- 
nitely human,  patient  and  hopeful  spirit  of  God 
could  ever  recall  her  soul  to  his  great  world- 
home. 

Some  years  later  I  crossed  the  path  of  another 
spirit  driven  to  the  verge  of  madness  by  this 


168    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

same  loss  of  faith  in  the  humane  presence  of 
God.  She  was  alone  and  friendless  in  the  world. 
In  her  loneliness  of  spirit  she  sought  the  compan- 
ionship of  God  but  could  not  find  him.  A 
woman  of  refinement  with  no  impulses  to  tempo- 
rary sin  she  was  able  by  her  culture  to  find  in  God 
all  the  qualities  of  divinity  save  just  this  one  note 
of  infinite  humanity.  Power,  majesty,  law, 
righteousness  —  all  these  she  acknowledged  as 
belonging  in  the  world  being;  but  in  all  these 
she  found  no  response  to  her  trembling,  human 
needs,  no  real  presence  to  companion  her  in  the 
lonely  struggles  of  her  wakeful  night-watches. 
For  long  she  had  been  desperately  struggling 
against  the  impulse  to  give  up  her  search  for  the 
divine  companionship  and  to  end  her  life  in  a 
last,  violent  protest  against  the  lovelessness  of  the 
circumpressing  power  she  called  God. 

The  exquisite  pain  of  utter  soul-loneliness, 
when  all  forms,  human  and  divine,  appear  as  they 
were  phantasmal  and  unreal  t  What  wonder  that 
the  broken  soul  seeks  relief  in  the  painlessness  of 
endless  death?  It  is  the  tragedy  of  a  soul  that 
has  lost  for  a  while  humanity's  age-long  vision 
of  God's  own  mystic  humanity.  Is  it  strange 
that  the  tearing  away  from  a  human  spirit  of  the 
silent  soul  of  its  humanity,  the  painfully  accu- 
mulated belief  of  all  human  ages  in  God's  sur- 
passing humanity,  should  so  lacerate  and  maim 
that  soul  that  in  death  it  seeks  release  from  the 
horrible  aching  at  its  broken  heart?  It  is  as  if 


THE  PRESENT  GOD  169 

the  very  soul  of  humanity  had  met  a  sudden  and 
tragic  death,  as  if  the  whole  soul  of  God  had 
passed  out  of  this  world-home  of  our  human 
life. 

IV 

But  there  is  in  all  this  a  divine  compensation. 
The  loss  of  faith  in  God's  regnant  humanity  may 
torture  a  soul  beyond  all  human  endurance. 
And  yet  passing  thus  through  this  valley  of  soul- 
death  the  human  spirit,  sooner  or  later,  now  or 
then,  will  emerge  into  the  sunlight  of  God's  in- 
visible presence  —  a  presence  solemnized  and 
brightened  in  infinite  degree  by  the  vision  of  the 
soul's  black  death.  Just  so,  this  faith  in  God's 
full  humanity  may  in  the  very  hour  of  deadly 
darkness  enter  the  life  of  a  man  and  burn  in  upon 
him  a  mark  of  divinity  so  tender  and  sensitive 
that  no  calamity,  whether  of  death  or  of  life,  can 
estrange  him  from  God's  endless  humanities. 
His  soul  has  been  touched  with  a  live  fire  from  the 
altar  of  God's  eternal  humanity. 

All  other  ways  to  God  are  blind,  formal,  un- 
conceiving  except  this  way  of  mystic,  practical 
confidence  in  the  spaceless,  timeless  value  of  hu- 
man life.  God  may  by  external  marks  reveal 
the  whole  body  of  his  divinity  and  yet  his  in- 
visibly human  soul  remain  unseen.  It  is  this  un- 
seen grace  of  infinite  patience,  hopefulness  and 
human  understanding,  transforming  all  God's 
visible,  physical  energies,  that  sets  him  at  once 
beyond  the  range  of  our  physical  imagination 


170    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

and  yet  within  the  range  of  our  divinely  human 
needs.  The  divine  energy  of  God's  invisible  hu- 
manity pours  through  and  beyond  us  as  we  come 
and  go  upon  our  human  errands  of  mercy  and 
pity.  The  divine  sorrow,  deep  yet  comprehend- 
ing beyond  the  limits  of  our  poor  human  vision 
presses  in  upon  our  human  souls  until  round 
about  is  the  perfect  peacefulness  of  the  divine 
companionship.  This  infinite  humanity  of  God 
is  not  to  be  proved  or  measured.  His  divine  hu- 
manity must  be  touched  directly,  heart  to  heart, 
spirit  to  spirit.  We  must  let  our  human  life  with 
its  faltering  courage,  nobility  and  love  be  filled 
straightway  and  abundantly  from  the  divine  life 
with  its  world-wide  courage,  its  world-old  no- 
bility and  love. 

By  no  other  way  can  a  man  arrive  at  a  con- 
viction of  God  which  might  not  at  the  very  next 
turn  in  his  human  life  be  shaken  by  one  of  life's 
mysterious  calamities.  A  thousand  cases  of  real 
life  are  at  hand  in  every  plague-spotted  city  in 
the  world  to  show  you  that  your  dainty  demon- 
stration of  God  blinks  the  facts.  God  alive  ap- 
pears only  to  him  whose  search  begins  and  ends 
in  a  pure  and  brave  humanity.  Let  the  purity 
and  heroism  disappear  from  a  man's  belief  in 
God  and  he  will  find  himself  stolidly  worshipping 
the  wooden  deity  of  a  schoolman.  As  there  is 
only  one  kind  of  godlessness,  so  there  is  only 
one  kind  of  godliness.  The  godless  man  is  he 
who,  knowing  God  by  all  the  clever  tricks  of  the 


THE  PRESENT  GOD  171 

•choolman's  trade,  no  longer  keeps  faith  with  the 
righteous  humanity  of  God.  The  godly  man  is 
he  who  without  the  conceit  of  knowledge  yet  has 
kept  faith  with  men,  has  played  the  divine  game 
of  the  humanities  honorably,  tirelessly,  unwhim- 
peringly,  and  who  gladly  risks  his  eternal  life 
upon  the  belief  that  righteousness  and  love  are  at 
the  heart  of  things  in  this  world.  For  insensibly 
this  man  with  his  boundless  human  vision  comes 
to  practice  God's  invisible  humanity,  and  in  prac- 
ticing this  human  divinity  he  learns  that  the  in- 
finite energy  of  a  schoolman's  demonstrated  God 
is  one  in  substance  and  in  spirit  with  the  divine 
energy  that  preoccupies  all  men's  meditations 
and  leads  them  in  the  way  of  humanity. 

v 

Even  so  the  race  of  men  has  learned  to  risk 
its  unseen  future  upon  the  belief  that  its  age- 
long vision  of  an  ideal  humanity  is  but  the  vision 
of  the  deepest,  intensest  and  noblest  passions  in 
the  very  soul  of  God.  I  sometimes  glimpse  this 
vision  of  humanity's  God  alive  as  it  appears  in 
the  midst  of  the  grey  cloud  of  magic  and  super- 
stition obscuring  its  gracious  features.  It  is  a 
vision  of  a  Man  of  almightiness  and  deep  wisdom, 
a  Man  with  soul-sinews  like  brass  and  iron,  his 
form  and  features  all  marred  and  scarred  by  the 
battles  of  life,  his  person  all  quivering  and  sen- 
sitive with  the  pain  and  suffering  and  sorrows  of 
life.  A  nobleman  he  is  with  power  and  wisdom 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

checked  and  controlled  in  a  perfect,  constant  pa- 
tience and  love.  In  his  everlasting  arms  he  bears 
and  protects  a  little  child.  His  great  strength 
is  held  and  guarded  lest  by  some  accident  of  his 
very  power  he  should  injure  and  crush  this  pre- 
cious offspring  of  his  love.  His  great  wisdom  is 
bowed  down  to  the  level  of  the  simple  prattle 
of  the  child-life  he  is  bearing,  his  great  body 
a-tremble  with  the  joy  of  the  responsive  caresses 
with  which  the  child  expresses  its  perfect  trust  in 
his  great  being,  its  perfect  dependence  upon  his 
great  heart.  With  infinite  gentleness  and  ten- 
der firmness  he  controls  and  guides  the  little  soul 
struggling  and  throbbing  in  his  restraining,  en- 
circling arms.  And  as  this  vision  of  the  divine 
Man  grows  clearer  and  clearer  in  the  long  course 
of  human  history,  as  his  features  becoming  more 
and  more  majestic  and  world-wide  finally  disap- 
pear in  the  invisible  depths  of  time  and  space  I 
know  that  this  divine  Man  is  God.  And  the  lit- 
tle child  is  Humanity. 


APPENDIX  A 
AN   OUTLINE  OF  COSMIC  HUMANISM1 

In  a  former  paper  in  this  Journal  the  writer 
outlined  an  hypothesis  of  absolute  experience, 
suggesting  here  and  there  a  philosophy  of  "  cos- 
mic humanism  "  which,  if  worked  out,  might  re- 
deem American  philosophy  from  its  present  level 
of  brute  pragmatism  and  unromantic  realism.  If 
only  the  master  pragmatists  would  suppress  their 
endless  essays  in  defense  and  definition  of  their 
method !  All  but  the  most  stiff-necked  and  unre- 
generate  of  the  younger  English-writing  philos- 
ophers have  long  ago  adopted  the  pragmatic 
method,  but  now  stand  amazed  and  dismayed  to 
find  their  masters  indulging  themselves  in  the  sin 
of  elaboration  and  analysis.  This  abuse  of  the 
"  method  of  definition  "  is  the  natural  vice  of  ra- 
tionalism. It  were  better  that  the  pragmatists 
applied  their  energies  to  cultivating  the  world- 
ground  which  they  have  already  wrested  from 
their  hereditary  foes. 

The  world-ground  lies  fallow,  awaiting  the 
hand  and  will  of  an  expert.  Meanwhile  it  may  be 
well  to  offer,  as  a  stimulant  and  irritant,  an  out- 

iThe  present  paper  was  read  before  the  American 
Philosophical  Association  at  its  meeting  in  Baltimore,  De- 
cember 29-31,  1908,  and  is  reprinted  from  the  Journal  of 
Philosophy,  Psychology  and  Scientific  Methods,  Vol.  VI, 
No.  3. 

173 


174   RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

line  of  the  world-view  which  in  his  former  paper 
the  writer  described  as  "  cosmic  humanism." 


I 

The  pragmatist  has  on  his  hands  a  world- 
ground.  What  shall  he  make  out  of  it?  There 
is  a  certain  pusillanimity  in  the  present  attitude 
of  pragmatism.  The  Promethean  boldness  of 
rationalism's  world-views  may  well  have  staggered 
the  gods.  But  now  their  divine  amazement  is 
tempered  with  heavenly  mirth  by  the  spectacle  of 
a  ^//-philosophy  which  yet  does  not  dare  to  press 
beyond  the  limits  of  tedious  definition  and  timid, 
"  on-the-whole "  hypotheses.  The  history  of 
earlier  pragmatisms  with  their  homo  mensura 
sophisims  makes  it  certain  that  unless  pragmatism 
produces  a  man  who  shall  measure  the  very  cos- 
mos by  himself,  the  movement  begun  so  potently 
and  promisingly  a  few  years  ago  will  prove  as 
evanescent  as  a  passing  breeze.  The  pragmatist 
theory  has  never  yet  been  genuinely  tested.  Such 
a  test  would  require  that  the,  so  far,  rather  sterile 
pragmatic  philosophy  were  incubated  for  a  while 
in  the  self -same  cosmic  matrix  wherein  the  seeds 
of  rationalism  have  hitherto  germinated  and  flour- 
ished. What  sort  of  world-view  is  the  pragmatic 
passion  likely  to  breed  if  it  thus  germinates  and 
produces  its  kind  on  a  cosmic  scale? 

Its  offspring  must  be  in  some  sense  a  worlfc 
view.  In  this  matter  the  pragmatist  must  recog- 
nize the  validity  and  persistency  of  the  human 


OUTLINE  OF  COSMIC  HUMANISM  175 

spirit's  search  for  something  universal  and  eter- 
nal. Such  a  search  has  indubitably  had  its  func- 
tional value  in  the  growing  experience  of  the  race, 
and  must,  therefore,  by  the  pragmatic  test  be  rec- 
ognized as  helping  to  constitute  the  living  truth. 
What,  then,  is  this  perfect  passion  for  universal 
and  eternals?  Has  it  the  validity  of  a  world- 
forming,  world-creating  principle?  Is  it  merely 
a  passion?  Perhaps  the  passion  itself  is  the  one 
universal  thing  in  the  world?  Does  it  connect, 
or  disconnect,  the  human  from  the  cosmic?  Is  it 
the  whimpering  and  wailing  of  a  soul  in  an  incur- 
able agony  of  finiteness  ?  Or  is  it  the  terrific  will- 
force  of  an  Ubermensch  claiming  his  birthright 
as  an  aristocrat  of  the  universal  life?  It  may 
well  be  that  a  painstaking  critique  of  this  old- 
fashioned  passion  for  the  eternal  and  universal 
will  expose  impulses  out  of  which  pragmatism 
itself  may  organize  a  view  of  the  world  covering 
in  principle  the  whole  ground  of  reality. 

It  is  certain  that,  whatever  the  eternal  is,  it  is 
not  of  the  nature  of  ideas.  The  prime  fallacy 
of  rationalism  arises  from  its  failure  to  distin- 
guish between  the  function  and  the  content  of  an 
eternal  impulse.  The  region  in  which  the  self 
acknowledges  a  universal  a  priori  quality  in  its 
processes  is,  as  the  literature  of  speculative  mysti- 
cism attests,  a  region  of  transempirical  conscious- 
ness. Wherever  the  mystic  experience  has  di- 
vulged a  content  of  ideas,  these  can  be  shown  to 
be  preconceptions  subconsciously  stored  away  in 


176    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

the  mystic's  past  experience.  The  pure  function 
of  consciousness  in  this  transempirical  region  has 
the  imperative,  eternal,  universal  quality  just  be- 
cause it  has  no  empirical  content.  It  is  a  pure 
function;  its  uncertain  content,  the  irreducible 
contradiction  between  ideas  and  will,  has  always 
been  regarded  by  the  first-class  pessimist  as  an 
unmitigated  evil. 

It  can  not  be  affirmed  that  this  pure  function 
is  inwardly  diversified  into  fourteen  forms  of  ex- 
perience, more  or  less.  Here,  again,  the  evidence 
of  speculative  mysticism  must  be  trusted.  The 
persistent  characteristic  of  the  pure  mystic  ex- 
perience is  its  spacelessness,  timelessness,  cause- 
lessness.  For  some  years  the  writer  has  experi- 
mented in  this  mystic  region,  but  has  been  unable 
to  identify  in  the  experience,  e.  g.y  of  time,  as 
infinite,  any  quality  that  distinguishes  it  from 
space,  as  infinite.  The  experience  in  both  cases  is 
one  of  perfect  fluency  without  ideational  content. 
The  infinite  as  well  as  the  infinitesimal  space-ex- 
perience begins  to  "  swim  "  or  "  shiver  "  as  con- 
sciousness verges  upon  the  abysmal.  These  are 
the  habitual  expressions  by  which  my  subjects 
have  sought  to  symbolize  the  perfect  fluency  of 
the  universal  and  eternal  quality  in  the  experience 
of  space  and  time. 

And  this  which  is  true  of  the  infinitudes  of  the 
pure  reason  is  equally  true  of  the  infinitudes  of 
the  practical.  Who  can  uncover  say,  in  wis- 
dom, as  infinite,  a  quality  that  isolates  it  from 


OUTLINE  OF  COSMIC  HUMANISM   177 

goodness,  as  infinite?  In  the  wisdom  literature 
from  Plato  to  Emerson  these  terms  of  practical 
infinitude  are  constantly  interchanged  and  inter- 
fused. The  eternal  goodness  is  in  all  points  wise : 
the  universal  wisdom  is  in  all  directions  good.  In 
the  mystic  experience  neither  goodness  nor  wis- 
dom has  any  ideational  content. 

The  first  principle  of  cosmic  humanism  con- 
fronts us  here.  Whatever  may  be  in  detail  the 
defects  of  the  world-view  herein  outlined,  this  first 
principle  I  hold  to  be  indefeasible :  "  infinite  " 
when  attached  to  any  substantive  whatsoever  is 
the  sign  of  a  contentless,  formless  function  of  ex- 
perience. A  self-organism,  whether  human  or 
cosmic,  in  fundamentally  finite  on  the  side  of  its 
empirical  content.  There  is  no  such  thing  in 
man  or  cosmos  as  an  infinite  idea. 

The  writer's  former  thesis  in  cosmic  humanism 
is,  therefore,  not  guilty  of  begging  the  question 
between  pragmatism  and  rationalism  in  affirming 
that  there  must  be  even  in  a  world-experience  a 
region  of  absolute  subconsciousness  the  infinity  of 
which  is  purely  functional.  We  may  grant,  with 
philosophers  like  Leibnitz  and  Hartmann,  the 
hypothesis  of  an  unending,  unconscious  fecundity 
in  the  world-ground.  The  cosmic  life  may  be  in 
an  incomparable  degree  teeming  with -germinating 
ideas  and  wills.  We  are  driven,  nevertheless,  by 
the  most  fundamental  structure  of  our  own  or- 
ganisms- of  experience  to  presuppose  a  formless 
function  underlying  all  these  countless  half -con- 


178    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

scious  impulses,  ideas,  and  passions  of  the  world- 
ground. 

In  its  first  principle  cosmic  humanism  is  thus 
aligned  with  speculative  mysticism  rather  than 
with  rationalism.  It  acknowledges  in  the  world- 
ground  an  "  infinite  tendency  "  rather  than  a  well- 
ordered  and  self -representative  structure  of  eter- 
nal and  universal  ideas. 

n 

In  its  second  principle  this  cosmic  application 
of  the  pragmatic  method  must  transfer  to  the 
world-ground  another  ingrained  feature  of  the 
human  organism  of  experience;  namely,  the  in- 
stinctive coordination  of  blind  impulses  into  a 
consistent  organism  of  vital  experience.  The 
pure  function  of  consciousness  does,  in  fact,  take 
on  a  living  content;  the  unconscious  does  become 
conscious ;  the  simple  fluency  of  primal  conscious- 
ness does  become  dirempted  by  warring  wills  and 
ideas.  The  prenatal  bareness  of  animal  experi- 
ence does  fructify  with  the  passing  years.  The 
cosmic  function  has  evolved  a»  cosmos  with  the 
passing  ages.  Now,  is  this  a  fructification  into 
consciousness  of  unconscious  idea  or  of  uncon- 
scious will? 

Here,  again,  the  bias  of  rationalism  must  yield 
under  the  test  of  experience.  This  test  has  al- 
ready shown  us  that  the  inmost  structure  of  con- 
sciousness excludes  the  notion  of  a  divine  mind 
full  of  an  infinite  number  of  infinite  ideas  and 


OUTLINE  OF  COSMIC  HUMANISM  179 

forms.  But  rationalism  might  justly  intervene 
at  this  point  with  the  sentimental  contention  with 
which  throughout  its  history  it  has  gripped  the 
race  of  men.  Putting  aside  all  metaphysical 
claims  with  respect  to  the  ideas  of  the  eternal  and 
universal,  this  pure  sentiment  of  rationality  sim- 
ply claims  that  at  any  rate  the  motives  of  the 
cosmic  life  are  always  ideational  rather  than  im- 
pulsive, calm  rather  than  passionate.  The  sole 
aim  of  world-experience  is  to  arrive  at  an  even- 
tual, inner  harmony  of  its  germinating  ideas,  to 
subject  all  wills  to  this  ideal  of  consistency  and 
smoothness  of  being.  In  a  word,  the  prime  aim 
of  experience  is  to  become  reasonable. 

If  this  final  defense  of  rationalism  is  an  argu- 
ment for  the  primacy  of  ideas  as  against  impulses, 
its  argument  can  not  claim  the  support  of  ex- 
perience. On  the  contrary,  nothing  is  more  cer- 
tain than  the  primacy  of  the  impulsive  phase  of 
consciousness.  The  consciousness  of  single-celled 
animals  is  fundamentally  motor;  likewise  the  pre- 
natal consciousness  of  the  higher  animals.  In 
these  two  cases  no  idea  whatever  (except,  perhaps, 
sensations  of  pressure  and  warmth)  can  be  present 
in  the  organism's  inner  experience;  and  yet  the 
very  signs  are  motor  by  which  the  psychologists 
infer  that  they  are  conscious  at  all.  Or,  again, 
in  idiocy  and  senile  dementia,  where  consciousness 
approaches  once  more  its  primal  state,  the  last 
functions  that  linger  above  the  threshold  are  not 
ideational,  but  motor.  In  "  absolute "  idiocy 


180   RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

there  still  remains  a  vegetating  activity;  in  de- 
mentia the  first  functions  to  disappear  or  become 
confused  are  ideational,  and  in  the  last  stages  an 
impulsive  activity  continues  long  after  it  becomes 
only  too  painfully  apparent  that  all  control  from 
ideational  centers  has  ceased. 

With  scrupulous  regard  for  the  structure  of 
known  organisms  of  experience,  cosmic  humanism 
is  thus  able  to  take  a  second  step  in  its  construc- 
tion of  world-experience.  It  now  conceives  that 
experience  to  be  an  infinite,  totally  subconscious 
function  whose  first  steps  in  world-experience  are 
impulsive  rather  than  ideational.  No  matter  how 
persistently  a  world-soul  may  in  its  present  con- 
stitution be  aiming  at  inward  reasonableness,  in 
its  beginning  it  had  no  idea  where  or  how  its 
activity  was  coming  out.  Like  every  other  or- 
ganism olf  experience,  it  just  became,  it  just  grew ! 
In  this  matter  cosmic  experience  is  again  com- 
parable with  the  mystic  passion  which  desires  an 
infinite  number  of  things,  and  yet  has  no  idea 
what  these  things  are.  The  cosmic  passion  may 
be  eternal,  the  cosmic  idea  is  inherently  temporal. 

m 

These  initial  impulses  arising  blindly  within 
the  formless  and  fluent  infinity  of  world-con- 
sciousness have  undergone  coordinating,  organiz- 
ing, and  hardening  processes.  In  the  present 
state  of  the  cosmos  the  average  observer  will  be 
very  reluctant  to  accept  any  doctrine  of  the  pres- 


OUTLINE  OF  COSMIC  HUMANISM   181 

ent  plasticity  of  cosmic  stuff.  In  this  matter  of 
plasticity  the  materialist  now  has  the  weight  of 
evidence  in  his  pan  of  the  scales.  The  patent 
fact  is  that,  except  within  very  narrow  limits  in- 
deed, things  are  not  plastic  under  our  processes 
of  practical  reaction.  By  overdoing  its  hypothe- 
sis of  the  perfect  plasticity  of  the  world-ground, 
humanism  might  easily  fall  into  the  pathetic  fal- 
lacy of  absolute  idealism.  On  the  clear  ground 
of  known  experience  the  humanist  may  insist  (a) 
that  the  cosmos  conceived  as  world-experience 
must  be  inwardly  a  pure  function,  and  (b)  that 
in  its  imtial  processes  of  growth  it  was  an  incho- 
ate matrix  of  perfectly  plastic  yet  blind  impulses- 
to-be.  But  it  can  not  be  urged  on  the  same 
ground  that  world-experience  in  its  present  state 
is  thus  blindly  and  perfectly  fluent.  World-im- 
pulses, whatever  they  may  be  in  their  inward, 
primeval  character,  are  now  outwardly  fixed  and 
hardened. 

Does,  then,  the  structure  of  cosmic  humanism 
fall  to  pieces  because  one  can  not  by  taking 
thought  pinch  off  a  cubit  of  world-stuff  and  plas- 
ter it  on  his  own  head,  nor  by  praying  make  the 
sun  stop  in  its  course?  There  is  a  certain  merit 
in  the  criticism  of  one  of  pragmatism's  doughty 
opponents  who  declares  that  the  theory  is  de- 
signed solely  for  the  man  who  needs  to  get  out 
of  a  scrape.  But  the  apparent  bathos  of  prag- 
matism at  this  point  arises  solely  from  a  failure 
to  fit  the  structure  of  human  experience  fully  into 


182    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

the  cosmic  scheme.  For  it  is  true  of  human  ex- 
perience, not  only  that  it  has  this  inner  and  ini- 
tial plasticity,  but  also  that  in  its  adult  form  it 
has  stiffened  and  hardened  into  all  sorts  of  phys- 
ical fixtures.  In  our  own  organisms  there  exist 
innumerable  physical  processes  which  are  only 
subconsciously  felt  and  are  ordinarily  wholly  un- 
controlled from  higher  centers.  In  both  its 
phylogenetic  and  ontogenetic  origin  this  human 
experience  began,  we  may  fairly  suppose,  as  a 
plastic  feeling-consciousness  of  the  total  organ- 
ism: the  plastic  simplicity  of  the  consciousness 
of  the  single-celled  animal  and  of  the  freshly  im- 
pregnated fetus  is  paralleled  in  each  case  by  the 
plasticity  and  simplicity  of  the  organism  itself. 
But  with  the  inward  formation  of  physical  sys- 
tems each  discharging  a  fixed  function  in  the 
evolving  organism  there  proceeded  likewise  on  the 
side  of  consciousness  a  certain  subconscious  hard- 
ening of  physical  consciousness ;  e.  g.y  feelings 
of  visceral  massiveness,  of  joint  and  muscle 
strains,  of  physical  weight,  hardness,  and  the  like. 
Humanism,  disabused  of  any  metaphysical 
hypothesis  of  cosmic  plasticity,  should  propose  at 
this  point  an  hypothesis  of  cosmic,  physical  sub- 
consciousness.  In  brief,  two  postulates  are  in- 
volved in  the  fundamental  structure  of  physical 
experience.  (1)  The  physical  universe  has 
originated  not  by  the  fully  conscious  control  of 
some  eternal  intelligence  but,  rather,  through  a 
hardening  into  objective  being  of  the  unconscious, 


OUTLINE  OF  COSMIC  HUMANISM   183 

organic  needs  of  the  impulsively  evolving  cosmos. 
(2)  The  physical  universe  is  now  felt  in  the  cos- 
mic life  as  so  much  pull  and  strain  and  dead 
weight.1  In  a  word,  plasticity  is  no  more  a  char- 
acteristic of  cosmic  than  of  human  experience. 

IV 

On  the  other  hand,  the  humanist  metaphysic 
need  not  postulate  a  cosmic  experience  less  plastic 
than  the  human.  As  we  have  just  seen,  the  phys- 
ical parts  of  an  organism  are  felt .  They  are  not 
inwardly  and  radically  sundered  from  the  region 
of  conscious  being ;  they  are  subconscious,  but  not 
unconscious.  Moreover,  within  certain  limits 
physical  processes  are  subject  to  control  from  the 
higher  motor  centers  of  the  organism.  Con- 
sciously controlled  heart-beating,  accelerated  or 
depressed  circulation  of  the  blood,  voluntary  bi- 
secting of  the  viscera,  the  suggestive  therapeutic 
reduction  of  inflammation  in  diseased  parts,  the 
psychic  treatment  of  nervous  and  chronic  diseases 
—  these  are  cases  in  point.  The  evidence  by  no 
means  proves  the  complete  plasticity  of  the  human 
organism  under  conscious  control  from  higher 
centers ;  it  does  indicate,  however,  that  there  is  in 

1 1  need  hardly  say  that  this  transcription  of  physical 
subconsciousness  from  the  human  to  the  cosmic  scale 
should  not  be  carried  to  an  anthropomorphic  extreme. 
In  the  cosmic  life  there  are,  of  course,  no  visceral  feel- 
ings, no  muscle  and  joint  strains,  and  all  that.  At  the 
most  the  cosmic  physique  feels  in  a  universal  degree  the 
intracortical  strains  and  the  brain  fatigue  which  assail 
the  human  life. 


184    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

the  conscious  organism  no  inherent  inability 
which  would  prevent  the  controlling  of  physical 
processes  from  volitional  centers  of  the  cosmic 
life. 

v 

The  foregoing  conclusions  expose  the  marrow 
of  the  divinity  within  the  dry  bones  of  scholas- 
ticism. The  genius  of  the  schoolman  is  revealed 
and  exhausted  by  his  search  for  a  necessarily  per- 
manent principle  underlying  and  pervading  the 
shifting  sands  of  being.  And  this  is  the  lasting 
passion  of  all  seekers  after  the  universal  and 
eternal. 

That  such  a  principle  is  discoverable  we  have 
seen.  It  is  in  reality  not  a  system  of  fixed  and 
well-ordered  concepts,  but  a  pressure  of  conscious 
activity  presupposed  in  all  our  processes  of  ex- 
perience and  felt  even  in  the  region  of  our  sub- 
conscious, organic  life.  But  the  very  process  of 
analysis  which  discovers  this  active  principle  of 
all  experience  does  not  wholly  satisfy  the  scholas- 
tic passion  for  an  eternal  whose  existence  is  nec- 
essary. It  is  conceivable  that  the  function  of 
consciousness  even  on  a  cosmic  scale  should  cease 
to  be  active.  There  are  cases  of  known  organ- 
isms wherein  the  active,  organizing  principle  has 
practically  ceased  to  work.  In  absolute  idiocy 
and  coma  the  organism  of  experience  seems  to  be 
slipping  back  into  the  abyss  of  totally  uncon- 
scious non-being.  Either  because  of  a  congenital 
poverty  of  impulses-to-be,  or  through  a  fatiguing 


OUTLINE  OF  COSMIC  HUMANISM  185 

of  these  impulses,  conscious  activity  seems  about 
played  out.  If,  now,  we  apply  the  norm  of  hu- 
man to  cosmic  experience,  we  may  admit  the  pos- 
sibility of  defectiveness  and  fatigue  even  in  the 
cosmic  organism.  The  persistency  of  the  phys- 
ical universe  in  the  midst  of  its  ceaseless  flux  of 
being  must  thus  be  interpreted  partly  as  the  natu- 
ral healthiness  of  a  great  cosmic  animal  *  and 
partly  as  the  conscious  resistance  of  cosmic 
energy  to  the  deranging  forces  of  mental  disease.2 
The  real  existence  of  universal  principles  or  laws 
is,  therefore,  to  be  regarded  not  as  necessary,  but 
rather  as  the  achievement  of  a  partly  conscious 
and  partly  subconscious  will-to-be  in  the  cosmic 
life. 

VI 

It  remains  only  to  ward  off  a  possible  misun- 
derstanding of  the  foregoing  analysis  of  the 
world's  absolutely  subconscious  matrix  by  ex- 
plaining that  this  discussion  of  the  "  infinite " 
has  no  explicit  reference  to  the  tender  infinitudes 
of  religious  experience.  To  affirm  that  the  abso- 
lutely subconscious  has  in  itself  a  blind  character 

iA  large  part  of  the  living  truth  is  undoubtedly  ex- 
pressed in  the  cosmic  animism  of  Greek  culture.  See 
Plato's  description  of  the  world-soul  as  a  "perfect  ani- 
mal," "Timaeus,"  31.  Cf.  Aristotle:  "Deity  is  an  animal 
that  is  everlasting  and  most  excellent  in  nature.  .  .  . 
This  constitutes  the  very  essence  of  God,"  "  Metaphysics," 
Book  XI.,  6. 

2  Such  resistance  appears  to  fail,  as  we  have  seen,  on 
the  human  plane  in  cases  of  idiocy  and  senile  dementia 
and  on  the  stellar  plane  in  cases  of  "  dying "  comets. 


186   RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

which,  as  blind  and  unconscious,  is  strictly  sub- 
moral,  or  to  consider  that  this  subconscious  world- 
life  has  arrived  at  and  is  now  consciously  working 
out  in  its  voluntary  centers  a  personal  character, 
or  to  submit  the  ground  on  which  religious  ex- 
perience may  justify  its  antagonism  to  positivism 
in  claiming  that  this  personal  character  is  cosmic 
and  not  merely  human  —  these  questions  the 
writer  hopes  to  discuss  at  some  future  time  in  a 
paper  dealing  with  "  The  Cosmic  Character." 


APPENDIX  B 
THE  COSMIC  CHARACTER  1 

In  two  earlier  articles  in  this  Journal  the  writer 
worked  to  grub  out  the  roots  of  the  pragmatic 
tree  of  knowledge.  The  tap-root  he  found  to  be 
a  bare  function,  an  universal  activity,  in  its  primal 
nature  subpersonal  and  subconscious.  In  this 
paper  I  presume  to  deal  with  the  apparent  dispar- 
ity between  this  God,  as  blind,  subvegetable, 
metaphysical  first  cause,  and  the  cosmic  character, 
the  God  alive,  upon  which  religious  experience 
seems  to  depend. 

I 

First  of  all  we  must  disabuse  our  minds  of  the 
notion  that  the  cosmic  character  is  substantial. 
The  function  in  which  life,  whether  human  or  cos- 
mic, has  its  primal  cause  is  practically  universal 
and  eternal ;  but  only  practically.  The  function 
is  so  long  as  life  is ;  conscious  activity  (sum  cogi- 
taw)  is  indubitable  so  long  as  the  living  doubt 
continues,  but  no  longer.  It  is  theoretically  con- 
ceivable that  all  life,  cosmic  as  well  as  human, 
should  cease  to  be.  In  this  catastrophic  event 
the  allegedly  everlasting  water-springs  would  have 
run  dry,  the  tap-root  of  being  would  wither  and 

i  Reprinted  from  the  Journal  of  Philotophy,  Ptychology 
and  Scientific  Method*,  Vol.  VI.,  No.  12. 
187 


188    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

dry  up  into  nothing,  the  world-soul  would  flicker 
out  in  black  death. 

But  there  is  in  all  this  no  occasion  for  pausing. 
Tested  pragmatically,  death  and  nothing  are  un- 
thinkable concepts.  Reflection  upon  them  could 
not  further,  but  only  retard  life.  Their  sole  real- 
ity consists  in  their  devilish  power  to  defeat  at 
every  point  the  lust  of  rationalism,  the  senseless 
passion  for  absolute  certainty.  Meanwhile  I 
find  no  thinkable  connection  between  this  absolute 
certainty  and  that  practical  certainty  upon  which 
active  life  depends. 

The  cosmic  function  is  indeed  conceivably  per- 
ishable. But  its  decadence  into  death  and  noth- 
ing is  practically  unthinkable.  Just  because  the 
cosmic  life  would  in  such  an  event  flicker  out  into 
nothing,  no  one  could  possibly  prepare  his  person 
for  such  a  catastrophic  end.  The  very  last  as- 
sumption with  which  our  practical  reason  can  get 
on-  is  that  of  a  functional  activity  which,  as  ac- 
tive, is  practically  absolute  and  imperishable ;  and 
this  no  matter  what  disease,  human  or  cometary, 
may  assault  its  universal  life.  Let  one  be  purely 
humanitarian  in  his  humanism  after  the  manner 
of  the  positivists.  Even  so,  he  must  assume  that 
energy  in  one  form  or  another  of  human  activity 
is  unassailable.  This  is  the  live  nub  of  the  school- 
man's insistence  upon  an  eternal  as  existent. 
There  simply  must  be  an  aTreipov,  he  thinks  —  a 
That  in  its  root  impractical,  but  in  its  potenti- 


THE  COSMIC  CHARACTER  189 

alities  inexhaustible  and  practically  absolute.1 
There  has  got  to  be  an  universal  energy  on 
which  the  phenomenal  life  of  God  and  of  men  may 
draw  endlessly.  Of  course  men  and  God  may  not 
have  this  limitless  credit  in  the  great  vault  beyond. 
There  is  a  certain  speculative  risk  in  all  life,  for 
that  is  the  condition  of  life.  Our  lives,  human 
and  cosmic,  depend  upon  taking  the  cash  here  and 
now  and  letting  the  credit  go  on  so  long  as  it 
will.  It  could  only  be  after  God  and  we  were 
eternally  dead  and  nothing,  that  the  default  of 
universal  energy  could  reduce  us  to  destitution 
and  starvation;  i.  e.,  never  so  long  as  we  know 
ourselves. 

In  action  the  universal  energy  does  function 
radically.  It  sloughs  off  dead  parts  from  the 
cosmic  organism  and  renews  its  withered  mem- 
bers. The  cosmic  environment  here  and  now  is 
all  on  the  side  of  health  and  perpetuity  for  those 
who  are  fit.  And  this  is  the  first  datum  of  the 
cosmic  character:  its  inherent  ability  to  preserve 
itself  alive,  its  practical  assumption  that  the 
energy  within  and  without  is  everlastingly  real 
and  subject  to  all  the  drafts  which  can  possibly 
be  made  upon  it  in  the  interest  of  life. 

i  Poincar£  says  some  clever  things  of  this  "  something " 
as  it  stands  in  theoretical  physics.  See  his  "Science  and 
Hypothesis,"  e.  g.,  p.  166. 


190    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 


The  implication  of  this  first  datum  is  that  the 
cosmic  character  is  an  achievement.  The  univer- 
sal energy  must  be  drawn  upon.  In  itself  it  is 
in  the  last  degree  impersonal,  impractical,  indif- 
ferent. The  etymologists  confirm  this  in  their 
account  of  the  verb  of  being.  "  To  be  "  in  its 
root-meaning  is  "  to  stand  forth."  The  world- 
energy,  I  dare  say,  genuinely  is  only  when  it 
stands  forth.  The  root-meaning  of  life  is  ex- 
clamatory, assertive,  the  will-to-power.  I  am: 
that  I  am. 

Too  often  cosmic  life  has  been  conceived  as  an 
energy  which  must  needs  function  in  the  form  of 
a  phenomenal,  universal  life :  its  standing  forth  is 
a  necessary  function  of  its  eternal  being.  The 
Eternal  thus  unconsciously  and  without  effort  cre- 
ates and  maintains  the  best  possible  world:  the 
world-soul  does  not  actively  draw  upon,  but  is 
poured  in  upon,  by  the  universal  energy.  But 
this  postulate  of  willynilly  creative  energy  goes 
against  the  grain  of  human  experience.  The  fact 
is  that  the  pouring-in  process  implies  a  certain 
suction  on  the  part  of  the  living  organism.  The 
receiving  of  power  from  on  high  or  from  within 
implies  a  will-to-power.  The  first-class  pessimists 
are  wanting  in  this  will ;  for  them  there  is  agony 
in  the  growing-pains  of  life's  processes.  They 
accordingly  refuse  to  suckle  themselves  at  the 
breast  of  being.  They  would  sink  back  into  tha 


THE  COSMIC  CHARACTER          191 

tireless,  senseless  That  they  set  out  from.  It  is 
not  inherently  impossible  that  one  should  in  the 
end  utterly  dam  the  inlets  of  the  universal  energy. 

We  must  remark  in  this  a  second  datum  of  the 
cosmic  character.  The  will-to-power  implies  a 
will-to-impotence.  This  ingrained  feature  of  the 
human  organism  must  be  transcribed  into  the  cos- 
mic life  as  well.  There  is  an  energy  circumpress- 
ing  both  within  and  without.  Upon  this  the  cos- 
mic life  draws  at  all  times  and  places  of  its  even- 
tual life.  The  drawing-in  process  is  not  neces- 
sary, but  optional.  Merely  to  be,  to  stand  forth, 
is  in  itself  an  unconscious  symptom  of  health  and 
character.  For  the  universal  life,  like  the  human 
in  its  morbid  moods,  may  genuinely  prefer  dissolu- 
tion to  further  organization,  death  to  life.  The 
world-organism  is  thus  an  achievement.  The  tire- 
lessness,  persistency,  and  continuity  of  its  being 
are  symptomatic  of  a  certain  sanity,  a  congenital, 
temperamental  healthy-mindedness  in  the  living 
soul  of  things. 

There  are  cases,  individual  and  racial,  of  ap- 
parently incurable  insanity :  the  inlets  of  the  uni- 
versal life  with  its  unconscious  sanity  seem  hope- 
lessly dammed  up.  Such  evil  is  radical.  Its 
cure,  I  imagine,  can  only  be  effected,  if  by  any 
means,  by  a  painful,  conscious  operation  within 
the  universal  life  itself.  Certainly  in  its  case  the 
unconscious  remedial  agency  of  the  cosmic  life 
has  miserably  failed.  But  in  any  event  the  exist- 
ence here  and  there  of  diseased  parts  in  the  world- 


192    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

organism  does  not  argue  that  the  whole  is  incom- 
petent or  likely  to  degenerate  into  the  amorphous 
energy,  the  cosmic  infancy,  it  set  out  from. 
The  evidence  weighs  heavily  on  the  side  of  the 
general  sanity  of  the  cosmic  life. 

A  third  datum  of  the  cosmic  character  there- 
fore, is  its  animal  efficiency  and  unconscious  san- 
ity. It  achieves  being,  it  draws  upon  the  uni- 
versal energy  by  a  natural  instinct-to-be. 

in 

In  these  prime  data,  however,  the  cosmic  char- 
acter is  subconscious  and  subpersonal.  So  far, 
the  cosmic  life  is  strictly  animal ;  it  grows  instinc- 
tively in  the  virgin  womb  of  being.  The  human 
life  is  suckled,  fortified  and  sanified  within  this 
cosmic  animal.1 

This,  too,  is  religion  of  a  certain  type  and  its 
proper  emotions  are  in  a  profound  degree  the- 
ophanic.  Meanwhile  it  is  arch-pessimism  —  a 
religion  based  upon  the  experience  of  personal 
life  as  a  disease  of  consciousness  to  be  remedied 
by  anesthesis  and  analgesis,  a  return  to  the  sub- 
conscious organism  of  which  personal  feeling-will 
is  but  an  inflamed  member.  Cosmic  character,  so 
the  argument  goes,  is  only  weakened  and  diseased 
by  these  germs  of  personality. 

i  One  feels  secure  and  willing  to  function  naturally 
within  cosmos's  great  organism.  But  I  wonder  if  our 
cosmic  emotion  at  this  level  is  not  really  comparable  with 
the  gratitude  we  might  feel  toward  a  great  animal  that  has 
instinctively  saved  our  own  skin  and  bones  from  the  grave? 


THE  COSMIC  CHARACTER  193 

The  writer  agrees  that  a  person  is  an  inflamma- 
tion of  cosmic  being.  But  this  disease  of  person- 
ality is  a  condition  in  which  alone  such  terms  as 
"  purpose,"  "  value,"  "  worth,"  "  morality,"  gain 
genuine  meaning.  Religious  pessimism  has  al- 
ways aimed  at  so-called  unconscious  purpose,  in- 
stmctive  worth,  animal  morality.  But  really 
these  are  all  contradictions  in  terms.  They  would 
reduce  ends  to  unconscious,  instinctive,  animal 
functions,  whereas  the  quintessential  meaning  of 
an  end  requires  that  it  be  consciously  felt,  aimed 
at,  controlled ;  in  a  word,  that  it  prepossess  and 
be  consciously  acknowledged  by  some  person.  I 
grant  that  this  condition  is  hard.  Each  fulfill- 
ment wherein  a  conscious  purpose  becomes  a  part 
of  the  organism's  unconscious  character  is  but 
the  progenitor  of  another  newly-felt  purpose ;  and 
so  on  endlessly.  But  this  constitutes  conscious 
as  distinguished  from  unconscious  character.  In 
personality  there  is  an  indispensable  endless  chal- 
lenge to  unfulfilled  being,  a  "  standing  forth  " 
which,  on  the  one  hand,  will  not  permit  the  human 
life  to  sink  back  into  the  unconscious  bliss  of 
animal  activity  it  has  risen  above,  and  which,  on 
the  other  hand,  can  never  raise  that  human  life  to 
a  haven  of  supraconscious  rest.  Fichte  found 
this  inner  anstoss  a  challenge  for  all  time.  Car- 
lyle  leapt  under  it  as  under  a  cosmic  lash.  Poor 
Nietzsche  lost  his  sanity  under  the  pressure  of  its 
ceaseless  will-to-power. 

At  all  events  the  cosmic  life  has  in  us  taken  on 


194    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

a  conspicuous  personal  character.  In  us  its  pres- 
ent ends  are  genuinely  felt.  In  us  its  ends  are 
unthinkable,  endless,  as  the  pessimists  are  everlast- 
ingly reminding  us;  but  they  are  none-the-less 
conscious  imperatives.  We  may  risk  disease,  lose 
the  sanity  of  our  pure  reason  in  gaining  the  san- 
ity of  our  practical,  but  if  we  turn  back  we  are  as 
salt  which  has  lost  its  savor:  we  lose  the  very 
flavor  and  essence  of  character.  In  us,  then,  the 
blind  character  of  the  cosmic  impulses  has  be- 
come endlessly  conscious.  Henceforth  we  must 
aim  at  being,  we  must  control  our  ends  even  to  the 
point  where  the  abysmal  possibilities  of  being 
blind  us  with  a  new  kind  of  blindness ;  the  blind- 
ness of  one  whose  pupils  strain  to  take  in  the 
invisible. 

"  But  this  is  positivism,  pure  and  simple,"  some 
one  will  say.  "  This  is  human  character,  very 
good  while  it  lasts !  but  it  makes  out  no  such  case 
for  the  universal  life.  It  means  merely  that  a 
certain  animal  has  evolved  into  conscious  self- 
possession.  Man,  so  far,  sports  above  his  cosmic 
progenitor.  Like  positivism,  your  cosmic  hu- 
manism is  really  an  wngoddmg  (Entgottung)  of 
the  universal  life,  a  surreptitious  deification  of 
human  being.  Is  God,  then,  merely  a  *  crowd- 
consciousnes  '?  " 

To  all  this  cosmic  humanism  must  reply  imper- 
turbably:  God,  if  not  merely  human,  is  at  any 
rate  essentially  just  that.  Our  humanism  has 
practically  all  its  active  interests  in  common  with 


THE  COSMIC  CHARACTER  195 

scientific  positivism.1  In  its  description  of  the 
universal  life  there  is  no  taint  of  magic  religion 
nor  of  overleaping  metaphysics.  The  world- 
ground  as  the  incomparably  fecund  matrix  of  the 
present  cosmos  is  in  our  view  identical  with  the 
ether-strains  of  experimental  physics.  Cosmos  is 
a  system  of  countless  straining  relations,  a  com- 
plex of  Energie-stromen.  Psychophysically  the 
cosmic  character  appears,  so  far,  as  an  organism 
of  vital  activities  risen  to  the  level  of  animal  sub- 
consciousness.  In  us  this  cosmic  animal  has 
varied  to  the  high  level  of  personal  consciousness. 
But  then,  the  "  eternal  "  of  rationalism  is  an 
unnecessary  hypothesis,  if  only  human  character 
be  allowed  cosmic  application  and  sweep.  If  con- 
scious aiming  is  now  and  practically  universal  in 
the  cosmic  life,  to  say  that  it  has  been  eternally 
so  adds  nothing  significant  to  the  present  facts 
and  life  of  the  world-soul.  The  fact  is  that  the 
hypothesis  of  an  eternal,  infinite  character  uncon- 
sciously seeks  to  remedy  the  one  glaring  defect  in 
positivism ;  namely,  its  inveterate  thinking  of  man 
apart  from  cosmos.  But  the  human  organism  is 
continuous  with  the  unthinkably  limpid  stuff  of 
which  the  universal  life  itself  is  a  function.  In 
a  most  important  and  literal  sense  the  character 
of  any  part  of  the  world-life  is  in  its  degree  the 
character  of  the  whole.  The  universal  energy 
which  all  life  draws  upon  its  practically  a  per- 

1 1   mean  "  scientific "  as  distinguished  from  the  more 
passionate  but  shallower  ethical  positivism. 


196    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

feet,  limpid  fluid.  If  I  tap  my  desk  here  with 
my  pen  the  world-ground  is  moved  gelatinously 
throughout  its  whole  being.  Now,  I  permit  in 
my  person  impulses  of  conscious  purpose;  these 
aims  are  like  my  pen-taps  of  a  moment  ago: 
whenever  they  hit  the  truth  in  the  bull's-eye,  they 
ring  their  reality  into  the  whole  cosmic  life;  and 
this  by  physical  necessity,  if  you  please.  The 
cosmic  life  in  us  and  through  us  has  become  in  all 
its  physical  energies  a  personal  animal.  Should 
it  turn  back  from  the  endless  Person  it  now  aims 
to  become,  should  it  seek  to  reduce  or  prevent  the 
inflammation  which  in  us  brings  it  to  conscious 
possession  of  all  its  own  latent  energies,  it  would 
surely  degenerate  into  the  blind,  witless  being  it 
once  was. 

An  infinite  appetite  for  personal  being  is  thus 
a  third  datum  of  the  cosmic  character. 

IV 

Once  we  entertain  the  notion  that  the  cosmic 
life  is  moved  through  and  through  by  the  birth  of 
men  within  its  being  there  remains  only  the  task 
of  ascribing  to  the  cosmic  character  the  ineradi- 
cable forms  and  passions  of  the  human  organism. 
For  the  religion  of  humanism  will  turn  out  to  be 
in  the  highest  degree  anthropomorphic  and  an- 
thropopathic  in  its  experience  of  the  divine  life. 

As  to  the  anthropomorphic  character  of  the 
cosmic  life.  The  cosmic  physique  obviously  is 
free  from  the  parts  and  organs  we  commonly  re- 


THE  COSMIC  CHARACTER          197 

mark  in  the  frames  of  animals ;  it  has  no  systems, 
circulatory,  skeletal,  urinogenital,  and  the  like. 
It  has  not  the  blue  eyes  and  fair  hair  of  its  Thra- 
cian  idolater,  nor  the  flat  nose  of  the  Ethiopian. 
It  is  as  it  were  "  all  eye,"  "  all  ear,"  and  "  all 
thought."  If  it  be  physical  at  all,  it  would  seem 
to  have  the  quality  of  sensuous  experience  without 
the  visible  end-organs  thereof. 

Is,  then,  the  cosmic  life  completely  amorphous? 
This  we  can  hardly  say;  for  there  is  in  fact  a 
cosmic  physique  —  planets,  stars,  earths,  comets, 
all  more  or  less  harmoniously  adjusted  by  this 
time  into  a  systematic  whole.  Our  thought  of  the 
cosmic  life  may  thus  in  one  point  be  psycho- 
physical,  and  anthropomorphic.  It  is  of  course 
a  figure  to  speak  of  the  universal  life  as  "  all 
eye  "  and  "  all  ear."  Regarding  its  gross  anat- 
omy, one  would  be  nearer  the  literal  truth  in 
thinking  of  the  cosmic  physique  as  all  brain. 
The  stellar  universe,  once  more  in  its  gross  anat- 
omy, is  not  unlike  the  cellular  structure  of  a  hu- 
man cerebrum.1  Of  all  our  animal  psychophys- 
ical  functions  it  is  the  cerebral  which  the  cosmic 
life  most  nearly  duplicates. 

It  would  seem  that  we  can  dispense  with  every 
other  form  of  physique  save  the  nervous.  Let 
idealism  operate  to  remove  that  and  the  remain- 
ing reality  is  in  the  last  degree  unreal  and  im- 

i  If  a  cerebrum  were  magnified  to  be  proportionate  with 
the  stellar  universe,  I  imagine  the  individual  neurons 
would  present  a  spectacle  not  unlike  that  of  the  stars  and 
planets  of  the  elliptoid  universe. 


198    RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

practical.  Thus  the  cosmic  life  like  the  human, 
may  be  conceived  as  indefinitely  changing  the 
form  of  its  neural  physique,  constantly  refining 
its  centers  and  perhaps  generating  new  (astral) 
nervous  systems  ad  libitum.  But  the  neural  gist 
must  persist  if  the  life,  human  or  cosmic,  is  to  be 
real  and  practical  in  its  impulses  and  ideas. 

Cosmic  humanism  is  thus  anthropomorphic  in 
its  religious  intention.  In  its  essential  terms  it 
gratifies  men's  ingrained  passion  for  human  form 
in  the  divine  life ;  i.  e.,  by  establishing  in  the  place 
of  the  overturned  God  of  hands  and  feet  a  real 
community  of  cerebral  experience  between  man 
and  the  universal  life.  The  physique  of  the  cos- 
mic life  touches  the  physique  of  man  in  his  most 
sensitive  organ,  the  brain.  Physical  functioning 
of  the  highest  order  (ideal  coordinations,  associ- 
ations, intracortical  strains,  and  the  like)  is  the 
same  in  both.  The  fourth  datum  of  the  cosmic 
life  is  thus  brain-character. 

If  now  we  determine  what  this  cerebral  function 
is  when  void  of  all  the  more  external  organic  sen- 
sations and  functions  of  the  human  frame,  we 
shall  have  some  sense  of  the  anthropopathic  char- 
acter of  the  cosmic  life. 

v 

The  elements  left  in  our  conscious  processes 
after  the  elision  of  all  sensory  and  organic  quali- 
ties we  are  permitted  to  transcribe  into  the  psycho- 
physical  life  of  the  world-soul.  We  exclude  at 


THE  COSMIC  CHARACTER  199 

once  all  the  base  constituents  of  our  human  ex- 
perience, all  organic  and  sensory  processes.  The 
cosmic  brain  exposes  no  lobes ;  nor  is  it  attached 
sympathetically  to  the  "  systems  "  which  enliven 
our  human  frames.  What,  then  is  this  pure,  cere- 
bral experience? 

1.  There   is  in  our  human  system  a  certain 
grossness  of  psychophysical  experience.     But  we 
aim  always  to  submit  our  muscle  and  j  oint  strains, 
visceral  sensations  and  all  that,  to  the  control  of 
our  higher,  cerebral  energies.     Now,  we  may  sup- 
pose that  this  subordination  of  lower  under  higher 
centers  is  furthered  and  affirmed  by  the  cosmic 
life,  for  the  excellent  reason  that  in  the  universal 
life  the  lower  centers  are  not  central  and  indeed 
do  not  exist:  all  its  energies  are  physically,  prac- 
tically ideal.     I  dare  say,  the  exquisite  energiz- 
ing of  the  human  organism  when  the  cerebral 
function  is  uppermost  is  due  to  the  fact  that  its 
energy  is  then  directly  in  the  stream  of  the  cosmic 
life's  cerebral  energy.     The  human  brain  dupli- 
cates in  its  measure  the  physical  harmonies  of  the 
celestial  spheres. 

2.  Now,  if  this  cosmic  life  is  cerebral,  it  has 
more  in  common  with  the  human  than  either  mys- 
tic ecstasy  or  pessimistic  coma  has  yet  dreamed 
of  in  their  philosophies  of  escape  from  phenome- 
nal being.     There  is  a  dash  of  insanity  in  each 
of  these  extremes:  mania  in  the  one  instance  and 
melancholia  with  terminal  coma  in  the  other.    The 
cosmic  character,  above  all,  must  be  well  balanced ; 


200   RELIGION  AND  THE  MODERN  MIND 

it  must  not  blink  the  facts  of  its  experience  in  an 
unbroken,  maniacal  ecstasy,  nor  must  it  wear 
itself  out  in  the  currents  of  being  till  it  seeks  relief 
in  the  unconscious  silence  in  which  its  articulate 
purposes  are  set. 

Just  here  I  think,  we  uncover  the  supreme 
datum  of  the  cosmic  character  —  its  conscious 
sanity.  The  cosmic  life  on  its  conscious  side  may 
well  be  assaulted  by  world-weariness.  It  is  in- 
deed in  the  highest  degree  probable  that  the 
energy-strains  of  the  universal  life  should  become 
fearfully  fatiguing.  In  such  an  event  the  plan- 
ets would  continue  on  their  unbroken  course  just 
as  our  neurons  remain  in  their  proper  places  even 
while  wearing  themselves  out  toward  weariness  and 
unconsciousness.  Cosmic  health  and  sanity  is  an 
achievement,  as  we  have  already  remarked.  To 
balance  its  world-soul  between  these  extremes  of 
endless,  senseless,  ecstasy,  on  the  one  hand  and 
endless,  vegetative  subconsciousness,  on  the  other, 
I  conceive  to  be  the  supreme  achievement  of  the 
cosmic  character. 

These,  then,  are  the  congenital  feelings  in  the 
cosmic  life:  strain  and  haul,  now  ecstatic  and 
again  depressant,  but  with  a  practical  intelligence 
that  maintains  the  cosmic  sanity. 

3.  The  emotions  in  particular  which  character- 
ize this  balancing  process  are  in  the  human  case 
the  feelings  of  patience  and  hopefulness.  These 
melioristic  feelings  lie  just  between  the  extremes 
of  world-pain  and  world- j  oy.  In  their  pure  form 


THE  COSMIC  CHARACTER  201 

they  are,  we  may  suppose,  non-sensuous,  intra- 
cortical.  Meanwhile,  or  perhaps  just  because 
they  are  cerebral,  they  are  emotions  which  simply 
reek  with  character.  They  alone,  I  fancy,  are 
the  emotions  which  on  second  thought  our  an- 
thropopathic  religion  would  be  willing  to  tran- 
scribe into  the  cosmic  character.  On  first 
thought  we  select  unbroken  joy  as  the  pathetic 
datum  of  the  divine  life.  But  such  a  gift,  as  we 
have  seen,  cheapens  and  indeed  cancels  all  the 
other  virtues  of  conscious  life.  Accepting  it 
one's  life  becomes  at  once  supraconscious  and  im- 
practical. The  desideratum  of  conscious,  practi- 
cal life  would  be  to  face  eternity  hopefully  and 
patiently.  And  now  this  enduring  patience  and 
hopefulness  are  literal  data  of  the  cosmic  charac- 
ter. They  are  congenital  and  ineradicable  in  the 
well-balanced  mind.  Sanity  is  indeed  just  prac- 
tical intelligence,  buoyancy,  rebounding  energy 
—  in  a  word  patience  and  hopefulness,  the  abil- 
ity to  await  patiently  the  returning  of  life's 
energies  and  buoyant  confidence  in  life's  outcome. 
Our  postulate  of  the  cosmic  sanity  involves  these 
emotions  as  its  necessary  data. 


FOURTEEN  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 


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Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


2SMaj'S5sS 

MAY  14  1955  U 

LIIMAKV  USE 

MAY  1  7  1955 

MAY  17  1955  LU 

^f30Nov'S7PT 

.ii!3^nj'iwv  o/rj 

REC'D  L.U 

NOV171^; 

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Mtr^H 

SG-3  ^Q 

pro  0  , 

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LD  21-100m-2,'55 
(B139s22)476 


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